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| <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?> | |
| <rss version="2.0"><channel><title>Mozilla Festival – Schedule</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org</link><description>RSS feed generated from the MozFest schedule API (description contains structured session cards).</description><lastBuildDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</lastBuildDate><item><title>Ritual Synesthesia</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2145</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2145</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2145 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ritual Synesthesia | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Alida Sun | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2145 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ritual Synesthesia | |
| Description: | |
| Ritual Synesthesia is a series of interactive somatic-based audiovisual experiments that integrate presence, resistance, and adaptation to algorithms. This experimental series is part of the artist’s daily coding practice of 2,390 days & counting, spanning light, sound, choreography, drawing and data healing. | |
| Hand coded & compiled in C++ on a secondhand computer well over a decade old running freely away from ensh*ttified imperialist bloatware.</description></item><item><title>Mozilla Data Collective Launch</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2144</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2144</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2144 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Mozilla Data Collective Launch | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: E.M. Lewis-Jong; Nabiha Syed | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2144 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Mozilla Data Collective Launch | |
| Description: | |
| This conversation features Mozilla Data Collective founder EM Lewis-Jong, who will share the vision behind the initiative, alongside Nabiha Syed, Mozilla Foundation’s Executive Director, who will discuss how it advances Mozilla’s mission to build a healthier internet. Together, they will reflect on the urgent need for data governance models that put people before profit and explore opportunities for community participation.</description></item><item><title>TECHNO CONSCIENCE</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2143</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2143</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2143 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: TECHNO CONSCIENCE | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Alex Braga | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2143 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: TECHNO CONSCIENCE | |
| Description: | |
| TECHNO CONSCIENCE is a collective experiment of techno resistance. | |
| A digital Vesper, a performance, a guided meditation. 30 minutes of music, visuals and a mantra to ignite digital transcendence and consciousness through a collective ritual. We are technology. We are revolution. We are humans.</description></item><item><title>Community Session (CLOSED DOOR)</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2142</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2142</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2142 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Community Session (CLOSED DOOR) | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2142 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Community Session (CLOSED DOOR) | |
| Description: | |
| Closed door community session | |
| Mozilla Alumni session following the AMA between Mark and Nabiha. An opportunity for the Alumni community to discuss Mozilla's strategy with Mark Surman. Will be facilitated by Christine Prefontaine. | |
| This session is ideally scheduled for Sunday November 9 after the leadership AMA (https://pretalx.com/orga/event/mozilla-festival-2025/submissions/TRYFKQ/). There will be 35 people in attendance</description></item><item><title>IRL Live Podcast Recording: AI As a Tool for Resistance</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2141</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2141</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2141 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: IRL Live Podcast Recording: AI As a Tool for Resistance | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Simona Levi; Airí Dordas; Bridget Todd | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2141 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: IRL Live Podcast Recording: AI As a Tool for Resistance | |
| Description: | |
| Every day, AI-powered tools are used to watch our movements; what we post online, where we go, and what we like. Now, imagine if we could flip this reality to watch powerful leaders and hold them accountable. | |
| In this live podcast recording of Mozilla Foundation’s award-winning podcast, IRL: Online Life is Real Life, Bridget Todd will be in conversation with two brilliant technologists working at the intersection of data, media, and democracy. | |
| Together, they’ll explore how AI can be used as a force for good to supercharge collective action, what it means to resist algorithmic oppression, build counter-narratives through data, and imagine AI that serves the public good rather than entrenched power. | |
| Be part of this vital discussion on resistance and technology, and get featured in the bonus episode of IRL Season 8!</description></item><item><title>The Smell of Data: Building an Algorithmic Perfumery Platform</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2140</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2140</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2140 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The Smell of Data: Building an Algorithmic Perfumery Platform | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Frederik Duerinck | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2140 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The Smell of Data: Building an Algorithmic Perfumery Platform | |
| Description: | |
| How do you bring together machine intelligence and human sensorial experience? In this talk, we will go on a journey through the conception, challenges, and future of algorithmic perfumery. The talk will explore what data and smell teaches us about personalization, ethics, materiality, and the blending of digital and physical worlds.</description></item><item><title>Three Moves to Stop Broligarchy (Break, Build, Enforce)</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/15</link><guid isPermaLink="false">15</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 15 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Three Moves to Stop Broligarchy (Break, Build, Enforce) | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Cori Crider; Robin Berjon | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/15 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Three Moves to Stop Broligarchy (Break, Build, Enforce) | |
| Description: | |
| Three Moves to Stop Broligarchy (Break, Enforce, Build) | |
| We can wrest the Web away from oligarchy and stop enshittification – | |
| But only by wielding our most powerful tools at once. | |
| How can we liberate our democracy from the grip of tech monopoly? | |
| We haven’t got long: after two decades of lax enforcement a handful of tech firms have seized control over every vital system we need to learn, trade, and communicate. | |
| In short, Big Tech have locked down our infrastructures: from search and social to app stores and cloud. Dominating tech infrastructures has given these monopolies unprecedented control over our economies, and therefore our politics. Under Trump, these infrastructures now serve ends that are explicitly authoritarian. | |
| There are growing movements to tackle the problem – but they are trapped in separate silos. | |
| In one corner we have fervent builders: technologists and executives who insist that our only hope is to back European firms or fund new tech. In another we have enforcers: people who argue that maxing out the European digital rulebook to “tame big Tech” is key, and no investment can make a dent. And finally we have breakers – who say only break-ups will cut the firms down to a manageable size. | |
| These camps are right in important ways – but their visions are incomplete. | |
| In this provocative talk, two figures hailing from two major sides of this movement will explain why these moves can only work together as a coordinated play: break, enforce, build. | |
| Using anecdotes drawn directly from decades of suing Big Tech, grappling with them in global governance fora, and coding alternative solutions, Cori and Robin will make the case that if we are serious about digital sovereignty in an uncertain world, we need all three - to break chokepoints, target our enforcement, and build alternatives. | |
| About the speakers | |
| Cori Crider is a lawyer, antimonopolist, Honorary Professor at UCL Laws, and Senior Fellow of Future of Tech Institute. She co-founded Foxglove, the tech-justice group, and spent fifteen years as a national security litigator and director at Reprieve. | |
| Robin Berjon is a technologist, writer, and a leading thinker on the new infrastructures and tech sovereignty. He is Deputy Director of IPFS Foundation, formerly VP of Data Governance at the New York Times and a vice-Chair of W3C.</description></item><item><title>Tactics for Unmasking Population-Control Algorithms</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/21</link><guid isPermaLink="false">21</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 21 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Tactics for Unmasking Population-Control Algorithms | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Naiara Bellio; Pablo Jiménez Arandia; Eduard Martín-Borregón; judith membrives llorens | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/21 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Tactics for Unmasking Population-Control Algorithms | |
| Description: | |
| Prisons, borders, and mobile networks have become laboratories where unaccountable code quietly sorts, scores, and surveils entire populations. This session assembles two Spanish investigators and one Mexican reporter-technologist to reveal, in vivid detail, how these black-box systems are reshaping civil liberties on both sides of the ocean—and what rigorous, rights-based inquiry looks like in practice. | |
| Judith Membrives i Llorens—philosopher, hacker-culture advocate, and president of Algorights—opens the discussion. Drawing on her grassroots work in Catalonia with Lafede.cat and civil-society coalitions, she situates algorithmic surveillance as a democratic crisis: public institutions deploy AI tools that profile and penalize the very communities they claim to serve, while meaningful oversight is scarce. By bringing this local fight for transparency and civic participation to MozFest, Judith seeks to forge global alliances that can hold power to account. | |
| Pablo Jiménez Arandia, an investigative journalist based in Barcelona, follows with his two-year probe into RisCanvi—the risk-assessment algorithm used in Catalonia’s prisons. He traces how a single probability score determines parole, work release, and family visits, often reinforcing systemic bias against incarcerated people. Pablo exposes the data pipelines feeding the model, the secrecy clauses that shield it from external audit, and the human impact of algorithmic “objectivity” gone unchecked. | |
| Naiara Bellio, member of the Journalism team at AlgorithmWatch and researcher with AlgoRace, shifts the lens to Europe’s external frontier. Her reporting uncovers how EU research funds fuel predictive policing platforms, biometric watchlists, and sensor grids along the Mediterranean and the Canary Islands—technologies marketed as “smart border” solutions yet operating as wide scale surveillance infrastructures with scant democratic mandate. Naiara dissects procurement documents and field testimonies to show how accountability evaporates once systems cross from lab to border zone. | |
| Eduard Martín-Borregón, Executive Director of Abrimos.info and Mozilla Tech+Society Fellow, concludes by mapping the proliferation of covert IMSI-catcher devices across Mexico and Latin America. Using real-world signal forensics and investigative techniques, he reveals a regional pattern where state and private actors intercept calls, track protesters, and bypass judicial oversight—illustrating how surveillance technologies migrate, mutate, and entrench impunity across jurisdictions. | |
| Together, these speakers weave a trans-Atlantic narrative of algorithmic control—and a call for rigorous, people-centered accountability capable of dismantling it.</description></item><item><title>From Extraction to Introspection: A New Philosophy of Personal Data</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/227</link><guid isPermaLink="false">227</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 227 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: From Extraction to Introspection: A New Philosophy of Personal Data | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Liv E. | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/227 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: From Extraction to Introspection: A New Philosophy of Personal Data | |
| Description: | |
| In a world where platforms optimize for attention and extraction, our personal data becomes a commodity rather than a site of reflection. How can we unlearn the default surveillance paradigms of big tech and reclaim our data through the development of non-extractive tools that nurture agency, memory, and meaning? | |
| We are constantly producing data through our devices. From algorithmic feeds to timelines, our digital footprints are designed for external visibility, not internal meaning. Traditional platforms are rarely designed to encourage us to re-visit our past in meaningful ways. Instead, we are taught to see data as something to optimize, monetize, or ignore altogether. This commercialization of ourselves can result in permanent disruptions to our behaviors, pushing the nature of our engagement with technology into market norms, rather than social ones. | |
| This data, though, is created through acts of being human. Memory and identity is fluid, contextual, and unique. Mainstream platforms often present identity as a fixed profile and flatten the emotional experience of revisiting artifacts from our past, but we can unlearn surveillance culture by recognizing the act of remembering as an emotional one. With this lens, we can shift the design paradigms from extractive applications to tools that support multiplicity, neurodivergence, and introspection. | |
| These ideas challenge the traditional role that individual users play in the role of constructing algorithms. Participants will learn about the philosophy behind introspective tooling and reflect on their own relationship with personal data, exploring themes such as: | |
| - Designing emotionally intelligent interfaces that help us reflect on and make sense of our digital memories | |
| - Constructing identity as something that evolves and is contextual, rather than a fixed, one-size-fits-all profile | |
| - Caring for our data the way we care for a journal or a garden: not just collecting it, but engaging with it in different ways over time | |
| This session will explore how we can reclaim our data for ourselves and engage with our digital pasts on our own terms. Using open source tools and local generative AI agents, we'll interrogate what it means to unlearn externalized modes of digital identity and uncover the opportunity space of data introspection. The content explored in this session will serve as an invitation to imagine and co-create futures where our data becomes a mirror, a map, and a means for transformation grounded in queer, feminist, and neurodivergent approaches to identity data.</description></item><item><title>Optimistic Analogue Technology: Independence from digital risks</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/18</link><guid isPermaLink="false">18</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 18 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Optimistic Analogue Technology: Independence from digital risks | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Matthew Linares | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/18 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Optimistic Analogue Technology: Independence from digital risks | |
| Description: | |
| Presenting a repository of methods for replacing digital dependence with analog alternatives. (Talk or forum) | |
| When power went out across Spain recently, communities were plunged into chaotic uncertainty as they sought ways to survive without digital devices and networks. They realised how fragile they were, reliant on systems that can fail unexpectedly, either by accident or at the hands of the enemy. | |
| Even when the networks don't fail, many of us are wary of technologies that we depend on but cannot control, as they surveil us and leave us beholden to corporations whose objectives do not align with ours. | |
| Upon initial consideration, the idea of moving away from digital technologies in our daily life may sound unrealistic and undesirable. Yet in the increasingly oppressive contemporary context, and with AI offering to take ever more responsibility and control, we can consider the cultivation of analog-first lifestyles a necessary endeavour to ensure social resilience, as well as a rich opportunity to explore new cultural and technical terrain. We chart visions and pathways to independence. | |
| OAT (Optimistic Analog Technology) offers a framework for community documentation and development of non-digital technologies, as well as tools and practices that allow people to integrate them into their own lives. | |
| In this presentation, we outline the project's principles and demonstrate examples of OATs in action, either through highly practical application, or in playful and romantic exercises that remind us of the abundant prospects for complex life away from the machines. Concrete examples include: | |
| - letter writing with design patterns like stenography, punk post, and ethical chain letters | |
| - physical money, cash, IOUs, community currency | |
| - trustworthy governance featuring paper based voting etc. | |
| The framework, partly constituted by an open source git repository (https://codeberg.org/mattlinares/OptimisticAnalogTechnologies), is divided into various aspects of contemporary life, detailing methods for communication, economic activity, food production, political organisation, etc., either without digital technology or with a conscious and reduced reliance on it, so as to maintain human autonomy. | |
| We are at a crossroads in our journey as digital beings. We may soon become dangerously dependent on digital technologies, so should urgently assess the situation and build alternative infrastructure lest we become trapped. | |
| With a view to cataloguing effective traditions whilst inspiring new techniques, the repository makes an appreciative nod to earlier generations who achieved so much with primarily analog tools. | |
| We invite the audience to contribute to the repo.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Digital Exclusion: Citizen Generated Data as a Tool for Empowering Marginalized Communities</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/251</link><guid isPermaLink="false">251</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 251 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Digital Exclusion: Citizen Generated Data as a Tool for Empowering Marginalized Communities | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Polinho Mota; thiane neves | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/251 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Digital Exclusion: Citizen Generated Data as a Tool for Empowering Marginalized Communities | |
| Description: | |
| In this panel, we aim to deconstruct the idea that data is an exclusive domain of experts and large institutions. This notion continues to fuel social and epistemic inequalities. As citizens from the Global Majority, we challenge the "default settings" of the digital universe to champion new ways of thinking, doing, and building. | |
| As predatory technologies like mort Artificial Intelligence advance, peripheral and marginalized communities risk further exclusion, with their needs and realities ignored. We need to unlearn the logic of technological development that perpetuates these disparities. | |
| Citizen Generated Data (CGD) emerges as a powerful tool to challenge these patterns. Born from initiatives like Civicus's but REshaped by experiences in the Global South, CGD empowers those historically on the margins to produce their own data. They become protagonists of their narratives, not mere objects of analysis. This approach goes beyond information gathering; it fosters civic engagement, the development of open technologies, and the mobilization of popular knowledge to influence public policies. | |
| The panel features three researchers from different fields who will come together to re-discuss these models and share how to redefine the relationship between rural communities and data. | |
| Keyse Valadares is a young leader in a traditional community in the Amazon, known in Brazil as a "Quilombo." She is a Social Sciences student and a grassroots communicator. | |
| Thiane Neves holds a doctorate and is a researcher in communication sciences. She is currently a Mozilla fellow in the Tech&Society program and a member of the Transfeminist Digital Care Network. | |
| Polinho Mota is a data scientist, a Ph.D. candidate in [insert his Ph.D. field if available], and part of the data_labe team (the host organization for the Tech & Society program). He is a leading figure in promoting CDG as an act of resistance and reinvention of the digital space. | |
| Together, we invite the audience to question the "default settings" of data production and use, and to discover how Citizen Data Generation can be a catalyst for building public policies truly rooted in territorial realities and needs.</description></item><item><title>Prototyping anti-fascist community-led AI governance</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/79</link><guid isPermaLink="false">79</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 79 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Prototyping anti-fascist community-led AI governance | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Islam Al Khatib - Noor | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/79 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Prototyping anti-fascist community-led AI governance | |
| Description: | |
| Unchecked AI dominance by a handful of tech corporations intensifies threats like surveillance, algorithmic discrimination, labor exploitation, and other human rights abuses. These are not accidental byproducts and are core to the infrastructure now enabling tech-geopolitical realignments and reconfiguring power on a global scale. Amid all this, drones that kill through algorithmic logics built on decades of surveillance, borders wired with biometric tech that criminalize us before we even move, we ask: what would it mean to build something else entirely? Can we? What does it take to imagine infrastructure not anchored in extraction, dispossession, and profit? We know it’s possible, because people continue to survive and resist even when the only lifeline is the very infrastructure built to surveil them, even when starvation is enforced but the internet stays on to broadcast their deaths. At this moment, what life-affirming alternatives are still within reach? | |
| This session proposes an explicitly feminist, anti-fascist, community-driven approach to AI governance, emphasizing cooperative, collective, and collaborative structures built on resistance, solidarity, and care. | |
| Agenda: | |
| Why anti-fascist community governance matters | |
| This opening conversation highlights the urgency of anti-fascist AI governance. It is a political and ethical framework that rejects the myth of AI neutrality, insisting that technology must be shaped to resist authoritarianism, racial capitalism, and militarized control. It centers governance rooted in anti-racist, feminist, and anti-capitalist values, where those most harmed by AI systems hold power over their design and deployment. We’ll also map the acute risks posed by corporate and geopolitical consolidation of tech power, particularly its use in war, genocide, and border regimes. This segment will include interactive note-writing and shared reflection. | |
| Interactive governance working groups | |
| Participants split into three groups: | |
| Group 1: Alternative financial models | |
| Exploring cooperative funding and ownership models to resist extractive corporate capture. | |
| Group 2: Feminist anti-fascist frameworks | |
| Developing principles for democratic, accountable AI use across different geopolitical contexts. | |
| Group 3: Transparent algorithms and community audits | |
| Brainstorming strategies for audits, oversight, and resisting digital securitization. | |
| Collective synthesis | |
| Groups reconvene to present recommendations for civil society, feminist networks, and community organizers. We’ll close by naming key anti-fascist governance principles and routes to building transnational solidarity. | |
| Post-forum: | |
| Participants are invited to reconvene during the festival or online to collaboratively write a short position paper or community brief grounded in this session’s discussions.</description></item><item><title>FaceID(ictator): Authoritarians Love Biometrics. We Don’t.</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/142</link><guid isPermaLink="false">142</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 142 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: FaceID(ictator): Authoritarians Love Biometrics. We Don’t. | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jessica Fjeld; Afsaneh Rigot | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/142 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: FaceID(ictator): Authoritarians Love Biometrics. We Don’t. | |
| Description: | |
| Using biometrics for device unlocking and feature access has become widespread in recent years, with consumer tech integrating facial recognition and fingerprint scan technology. Security folks, frustrated with the vulnerabilities of passwords due to shoulder-surfing attacks and risks of memorability, view the rise as a win. Privacy concerns are seen as a data-security issue that companies can manage. Many users, too, have embraced the promise of security and convenience in one sleek scan. | |
| But biometrics have other cheerleaders: governments seeking to abuse their power and expand authoritarian levels of control. | |
| Biometric unlocking is easier for law enforcement and other state agents to compel. From borders to protests, this feature gives them easier access to all the sensitive information we now carry with us–our contacts, communications, photos, and files. In some states, laws empower people to refuse to disclose their passwords, but don't protect against the use of their faces and fingers. Our research with members of the queer community who had been detained in the Middle East and North Africa revealed a strong correlation between having biometrics enabled on their devices and being subjected to physical violence in police custody. | |
| Passwords aren’t perfect of course, but we saw individuals could and did refuse to share them under duress, as the risk of exposing their phones outweighed the threat. With biometrics, however, the results were access and violence, removing any layer of resistance. | |
| So, what are biometrics secure against? State violence, border checks, protest surveillance, interrogations? If developers aren’t considering these real-world risks, they’re not building truly safe systems. And, privacy for who? Certainly not those most in need of it. This tech benefits power, not people. | |
| Worse, we’re normalizing widespread biometric scanning: faces and fingerprints fed into systems that may be leaked or misused. Seeing this tech championed by security professions signals a cultural loss that’s tough to undo. States seeking to repress human rights will take advantage, deploying the same technology to surveil peaceful protests, to limit access to social services, or to gatekeep places like courtrooms. Some already are. | |
| This session will highlight the De|Center’s research into state abuse of biometric locks, and explore with participants ideas beyond binaries, for secure device unlocking and access, including UX design that facilitates meaningful choice for all users, counting those who will deal with physically present adversaries.</description></item><item><title>Flip the script: data empowerment in digital health</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/136</link><guid isPermaLink="false">136</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 136 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Flip the script: data empowerment in digital health | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: suha.mohamed | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/136 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Flip the script: data empowerment in digital health | |
| Description: | |
| Across the world, calls for inclusive design that centre individuals and communities in the development of digital and data-intensive systems have gained traction. Yet, in practice, our ability to participate within these systems remains largely symbolic. People are often engaged through one-off consultations, initial consent forms, or informed surveys—rarely do they have meaningful, ongoing control over how or for what use their data is captured, used, governed, or shared. It continues to be easier to identify where communities weren’t substantively involved than to spotlight spaces where they truly shape the data systems that impact their life and wellbeing. | |
| Hosted by the Centre for Data Futures at King’s College London’s Dickson Poon School of Law, this forum invites practitioners, community leaders, researchers, and students to unlearn and challenge that status quo. It will serve as a collaborative space to surface shared challenges and build solutions together. In October, the Centre will launch its Data Empowerment Clinic, a think and do space that will engage students from across diverse disciplines in hands-on learning, equipping them to support a range of organisations, operating across domains like education, health and creative industries, to embrace meaningful data empowerment practices. | |
| This session will simulate a live clinic in action, with a focus on a use case in health. Acting as a preview and a provocation, it will ask: how can we experiment with new, more empowering ways of engaging patients through the lifecycle of data? | |
| Participants will join peers who are ‘flipping the script’ and building community-led alternatives—whether through data cooperatives, patient-led coalitions around medical device data, or other emerging models. The goal is not only to showcase what’s working, but to identify where we’re stuck: What are the barriers to building participatory, just, and democratic data systems? What needs to shift within organisations, institutions, or funding models for people to mobilize with and through their data? | |
| The forum will culminate in a collective mapping exercise. Together, we will co-develop a practitioner roadmap for bottom-up data empowerment: a living resource to be iterated on by those ready to take on the work of shaping fairer, more inclusive data futures.</description></item><item><title>Afrofuture World-Build: Reimagining Technology Through Ancestral Design</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/126</link><guid isPermaLink="false">126</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 126 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Afrofuture World-Build: Reimagining Technology Through Ancestral Design | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ingrid LaFleur | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/126 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Afrofuture World-Build: Reimagining Technology Through Ancestral Design | |
| Description: | |
| How might our technologies evolve if their design principles were rooted in ancestral wisdom, communal care, and ecological balance? This Afrofuture World-build invites participants to imagine radical alternatives to today’s dominant tech paradigms by stepping into speculative, culturally grounded futures shaped by Black and African diasporic traditions. | |
| In this facilitated session, we will challenge the “one-size-fits-all” mentality embedded in today’s design ecosystems, where efficiency often trumps equity, and abstraction erases cultural nuance. Drawing from the Dinkinesh Method, a futures-thinking framework developed by curator and Afrofuturist Ingrid LaFleur, this interactive workshop uses storytelling, system mapping, and collective dreaming to envision worlds where technology is not only inclusive but also liberatory. | |
| We will begin by unearthing the default assumptions embedded in today’s platforms—such as surveillance-as-safety, speed-as-value, or neutrality-as-design. Then, participants will collaboratively world-build a speculative tech society where design is informed by intergenerational knowledge, spiritual sovereignty, and pluralistic cultural values. Together, we’ll co-create prototypes of systems, platforms, or rituals that embody alternate pathways: What does data stewardship look like when grounded in kinship networks? How might algorithms evolve if guided by principles of harmony, not extraction? Can machine intelligence be designed to support spiritual and emotional well-being? | |
| This world-build is not about optimizing current systems—it’s about imagining what becomes possible when we center the sacred, the ancestral, and the collective in our design. Our goal is to make visible the hidden cultural scaffolding of dominant tech norms and illuminate futures where technology serves as a tool for restoration, joy, and sovereignty. | |
| Open to technologists, artists, designers, organizers, and anyone curious about justice-centered futures, this Afrofuture World-build will leave participants with new design imaginaries, tangible prompts for decolonizing their practice, and the inspiration to create tech aligned with liberation. | |
| Because the futures we envision today shape the technologies we inherit tomorrow.</description></item><item><title>Dragging Technology</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/271</link><guid isPermaLink="false">271</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 271 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Dragging Technology | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jake Elwes | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/271 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Dragging Technology | |
| Description: | |
| Deepfake drag, Digital apocalypses and Queer utopias | |
| Zizi & Me: a deepfake drag double act! Using Artificial Intelligence and real life drag, Me The Drag Queen and Jake Elwes present a unique show about queerness, cabaret and technology.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Digital Harm: Building Resilient Civil Society Through Proactive Safety Assessments</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/36</link><guid isPermaLink="false">36</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 36 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Digital Harm: Building Resilient Civil Society Through Proactive Safety Assessments | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Robin Kiplangat; Laura Tich | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/36 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Digital Harm: Building Resilient Civil Society Through Proactive Safety Assessments | |
| Description: | |
| Civil society organizations (CSOs) globally face increasing digital threats, and do not always have access to specialized resources and expertise to adequately protect their sensitive data and operations. This session introduces the Digital Security Readiness Assessment by BOLTECH (https://assessment.boltech.global/) as a crucial tool for CSOs to "unlearn" the myth of default security. By providing a structured, accessible, and risk-based framework for assessing, empowering, and protecting these vital organizations, the platform fosters digital autonomy and resilience. The session aims to engage MozFest attendees in a participatory exploration of how proactive digital safety assessments can strengthen the internet health movement, and is directly aligned with the "Unlearning Default Security" track. | |
| Proposed Session Format: Interactive Lab & Forum (90 minutes) | |
| We propose a combined Lab and Forum session to maximize engagement and practical takeaways: | |
| Part 1: The "Insecurity" Audit (30 minutes): | |
| A brief, interactive overview of common digital security pitfalls faced by CSOs. | |
| Participants engage in a simplified, anonymous "mini-assessment" exercise (e.g., using a short questionnaire or hypothetical scenarios) to highlight common vulnerabilities within their own contexts or organizations. | |
| Facilitated discussion on the immediate insights gained and the "unlearning" required regarding perceived security. | |
| Part 2: Empowering Resilience (45 minutes): | |
| A demonstration of key features of the platform, showcasing how it translates assessment findings into actionable recommendations and training modules. | |
| A facilitated open discussion on challenges CSOs face in implementing digital safety measures and how a structured assessment and empowerment approach can overcome these. | |
| Participants share best practices and brainstorm collaborative strategies for building digital resilience within the civil society ecosystem. | |
| Part 3: Open Q&A with the BOLTECH team (15 minutes): | |
| Discussion on how MozFest attendees can further engage with the platform, share resources, and contribute to a collective effort to elevate digital safety standards for CSOs. | |
| This participatory format will ensure attendees actively engage with the concepts, share their experiences, and leave with concrete ideas and resources to apply within their own organizations and communities.</description></item><item><title>Signals ≠ Surveillance: Demystifying a Single Ad Request</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/234</link><guid isPermaLink="false">234</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 234 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Signals ≠ Surveillance: Demystifying a Single Ad Request | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Hobert Bush | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/234 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Signals ≠ Surveillance: Demystifying a Single Ad Request | |
| Description: | |
| Session Type: Unlearning Default Design, Presentation (60-Min Talk) | |
| Today, 90% of the web’s revenue rides on a single, invisible moment: the programmatic ad call. In under 120 ms, the website you’re browsing, an exchange, dozens of bidders, and someone else’s JavaScript decide what you see – and what they learn about you. This session invites MozFest participants to unlearn the idea that tracking is a necessary cost of “free” content. It examines how Mozilla proves otherwise through its Respectful Advertising at Mozilla (RAM) vision. | |
| We begin with a lightning crash course that demystifies a real-world ad request and response. Each component is unpacked live: what’s sent to the SSP, ad exchange, what comes back, and where the hidden data flows occur. We break it down into seven core data categories advertisers routinely rely on: IP address, user agent, geolocation, content metadata, cookies/user IDs, device identifiers, and behavioral/demographic data. | |
| Then we flip the mode. For each data element, we compare: | |
| Industry norm - what most ad systems send and track | |
| Mozilla’s approach - how New Tab ads are served with synthetic IPs, normalized user agents, MARS proxy routing, and other privacy protections. | |
| Privacy Advantage - why this protects people | |
| User benefit (ELI5) - a plain-language explanation | |
| What’s Preserved / What’s Protected - the balance between signal utility for advertisers and strong data minimization for users. | |
| In the final section, we spotlight what’s still unresolved, including challenges like transitioning native to banner ad creatives with JavaScript responses and providing relevant ads without compromising user trust. We invite the audience to engage with these complex problems through open standards, design critiques, and technical exploration. | |
| What attendees will leave with: | |
| A clear mental model of how an ad request and response work | |
| A side-by-side map of “Surveillance vs. Respectful” data practices | |
| Links to internal documentation and contribution opportunities in RAM | |
| No ad-tech background required. Just curiosity and a desire to help reimagine a web where advertising works for people, not on them.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Creativity</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/153</link><guid isPermaLink="false">153</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 153 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Creativity | |
| track: 11 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Malik Afegbua; Sougwen Chung; Dayo Lamolo | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/153 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "11", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Creativity | |
| Description: | |
| In a world where algorithms compose symphonies, AI models paint portraits, and machine systems remix culture at scale: what does it mean to be creative today? This conversation invites two visionary artists working at the edge of human and machine collaboration, Sougwen Chung and Malik Afegbua, to unlearn what we’ve been taught about creativity, authorship, and artistic bias.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Blue Fever</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/218</link><guid isPermaLink="false">218</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 218 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Blue Fever | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Greta McAnany | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/218 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Blue Fever | |
| Description: | |
| Pseudononymous social well-being platform for young people where authentic self expression unlocks peer support and resources.</description></item><item><title>Thank You For Allowing Me To Speak With You Today</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/188</link><guid isPermaLink="false">188</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 188 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Thank You For Allowing Me To Speak With You Today | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Albie Swingler; Georgia Edwards; Kate Stonehill | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/188 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Thank You For Allowing Me To Speak With You Today | |
| Description: | |
| This short film by award-winning documentary filmmaker Kate Stonehill (Phantom Parrot, 2023) explores the use of deepfake technology to construct an alternative reality. Attendees are invited to engage with this immersive installation that delves into how deepfakes are made, their persuasive power, and how synthetic media can be used as satire - while contributing to a larger conversation on the implications of artificial intelligence. | |
| Since Elon Musk assumed - and departed - the leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, in a series of memos, government agencies have flagged words whose usage should either be limited, or avoided altogether. Many have been taken down from public-facing websites, or removed from educational materials, such as school curricula. | |
| In a world where government programs are being dismantled and certain words are increasingly censored, Stonehill’s film raises urgent questions: What happens when critical terms like ‘bias,’ ‘gender,’ ‘race,’ and ‘climate crisis’ are erased from public discourse? How does this shape the future of free speech? The speech embodies the disappearance of not just words, but of ways we acknowledge, validate and connect with each other. It is performed by a Deepfake of Musk, a figure who wields vast informational and political power. Deepfake Elon sets forth a vision of tolerance and a celebration of diversity. Can these artificially-generated imaginings subvert the toxicity of this fragile political moment? | |
| Participants are invited to write a sentence or two in the notebooks provided in this room, sharing their thoughts and responses to the film, deepfakes, AI, and the role of Big Tech. These contributions will shape a collaborative AI-generated film that explores the possibility of reclaiming public discourse through responsible use of synthetic media. Together with filmmaker Kate Stonehill, impact production agency ooto will launch a campaign encouraging critical thinking around digital literacy, implications of AI, and Big Tech. | |
| This immersive installation is a call to engage, learn, and imagine alternative futures through responsible use of technology - one that challenges the growing influence of Big Tech and reimagines the power of speech in our digital age.</description></item><item><title>So what’s up with Data Centers? Creating a policy standard for minimizing the harms of datacenters on people and the planet</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/237</link><guid isPermaLink="false">237</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 237 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: So what’s up with Data Centers? Creating a policy standard for minimizing the harms of datacenters on people and the planet | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Kali Villarosa; Alix Dunn | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/237 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: So what’s up with Data Centers? Creating a policy standard for minimizing the harms of datacenters on people and the planet | |
| Description: | |
| Session Type: Unlearning Tech Immateriality, 75-minute Interactive Workshop + Policy Co-Creation Lab | |
| Pre-read for session: The Maybe: Where Cloud Meets Cement — A Case Study Analysis of Data Center Development Link to Report (PDF) | |
| Data centers, the "factories of the cloud," are transforming landscapes, economies, and ecosystems worldwide. As AI and digital services drive explosive growth in infrastructure, the physical toll of these facilities is mounting: water extraction, massive energy use, real estate pressures, and opaque partnerships with governments. Yet communities often have little say in whether, where, or how data centers are built. | |
| In this interactive, community-first session, we’ll demystify how data centers function and what happens when they enter a community; drawing on real-world case studies from The Maybe report and beyond. Then, through guided breakout groups, participants will explore what it takes to build people-powered responses and design policy tools that place community rights, environmental sustainability, and transparency at the center. | |
| We’ll introduce participants to organizing toolkits, policy frameworks, and real-world tactics being used to contest or reshape data center development. Together, we’ll co-create a draft Community Policy Standard for ethical and sustainable digital infrastructure with relevance beyond data centers, applying to cloud, AI, and big tech accountability efforts more broadly. | |
| What Participants Will Walk Away With: | |
| - A grounded understanding of how data centers impact people and the planet | |
| - Awareness of tools and organizing strategies to respond to local developments | |
| - A collaborative, draft Community Policy Standard for ethical digital infrastructure | |
| - Access to a living toolkit with policy templates, organizing guides, and advocacy resources | |
| - A sense of shared power: communities can—and must—shape the digital future | |
| Format Includes: | |
| - Overview of the real-world impacts of data centers (with visuals + stories) | |
| - Breakout Groups focused on policy priorities: energy, water, land use, labor, transparency | |
| - Toolkit Demo featuring practical guides for advocacy, community response, and policy drafting | |
| - Group Synthesis of key policy elements, with follow-up pathways for action and publication</description></item><item><title>Dismantling Bias in AI: A Privacy-Centric Approach</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/11</link><guid isPermaLink="false">11</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 11 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Dismantling Bias in AI: A Privacy-Centric Approach | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Alexandra Kubiak | |
| start_at: | |
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| location_venue: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/11 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Dismantling Bias in AI: A Privacy-Centric Approach | |
| Description: | |
| Bias and underrepresentation are serious concerns in today’s search world, increasingly powered by generative AI. "Filter bubbles" (situations where users are exposed only to information or opinions that conform to their existing beliefs, due to personalized algorithms) shape our worldview even when we can access original sources, but in this new reality where algorithms dictate user content and original sources are distant and abstracted, these issues are magnified. | |
| Startpage, a pioneer in private search for nearly 20 years, has maintained long-standing partnerships with major search providers like Google and Bing. Additionally, Startpage is a part of System1, which also has similar partnerships with Facebook and TikTok. These dependencies provide us with unique visibility into the power these massive companies wield in shaping the information consumers see every day. Over the years, issues such as bias, filter bubbles, and the underrepresentation of minority voices have surfaced as these monopolies continue to operate mostly unchecked. | |
| Smaller companies have the agility and motivation to herald change by exploring alternative, more ethical solutions. At Startpage, our experience in balancing data use with privacy assurance shows us that escaping the “filter bubble” and uplifting underrepresented voices leads to the development of more ethical and also higher-quality technical systems. This advent of AI search is an opportunity to disrupt established biases in our history books, search results, and social media. We should use this opportunity to course-correct, such that the average user can trust that the information they receive is balanced and fair. Let’s discuss how! | |
| In this session, participants will explore strategies to prioritize fairness and inclusion in AI models from regulatory, process, and technical perspectives, while using privacy as a backbone. We will dive into practical steps to enhance representation in AI, such as intentionally diversifying training datasets and fostering inclusive development processes. This forum aims to empower participants with actionable insights to create AI systems that help users escape filter bubbles and promote equitable representation. In addition, the ideas we come up with will be put into action by Startpage for its millions of users globally to explore.</description></item><item><title>404: Patriarchy Not Found</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/54</link><guid isPermaLink="false">54</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 54 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: 404: Patriarchy Not Found | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Emma Aiyin Chen; Afreen SAULAT | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/54 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: 404: Patriarchy Not Found | |
| Description: | |
| The internet, as we know, is not a neutral space. It is architected by a handful of tech giants whose biases and values silently shape what billions of us see, say, and search for. From platform design to algorithmic moderation, we are living in digital systems that reflect and reproduce patriarchal norms—deciding what is "appropriate," "safe," or even "real." | |
| Now, with the widespread adoption of AI and large language models (LLMs), this conditioning is deepening. We’re not just browsing biased platforms—we’re being trained to accept their outputs as objective truth. And when it comes to reproductive health, this becomes dangerous. | |
| Nearly half of the world’s population experiences menstruation, menopause, fertility shifts, or other forms of reproductive reality. Yet this fundamental part of life is still censored, misclassified, and buried online, thus perpetuating the idea that the menstruating body is shameful. Research from the Court of International Justice (CIJ) shows that Meta platforms routinely suppress educational content on topics like menstrual health, menopause, pelvic pain, contraception, and abortion—flagging them as “adult” or “sexual” content. Meanwhile, ads for erectile dysfunction and men’s health face no such scrutiny. | |
| This digital erasure has consequences. It fuels stigma, silences communities, and throttles the reach of NGOs and women-led health businesses working to educate and support. It even restricts what LLMs "learn" as factual knowledge. In essence, the reproductive body is becoming algorithmically invisible. | |
| We propose a space to critically examine—and begin unlearning—the embedded design choices and invisible censorship that uphold this reproductive invisibility. What happens when we remove the patriarchal filters? What if sharing a period story or pelvic pain was not flagged, but welcomed? What if digital design made room for messy, hormonal, cyclical human bodies? | |
| Together, we’ll explore how platform moderation, interface defaults, AI training data, and health tracking apps contribute to gendered suppression. We'll look at how reclaiming design can serve as a feminist act—one that challenges the "norms" of health visibility online and reimagines what equitable, body-literate technology could look like.</description></item><item><title>No Safe Words: SexEd, Censorship and Resistance</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/109</link><guid isPermaLink="false">109</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 109 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: No Safe Words: SexEd, Censorship and Resistance | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Surabhi Srivastava; Shannon Mathew; Al Albertson; Rhian Farnworth | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/109 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: No Safe Words: SexEd, Censorship and Resistance | |
| Description: | |
| Technology is often presented as neutral, but for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) educators, pleasure advocates, and sex workers, it is anything but. This Forum confronts the built-in harms of automated content moderation systems and big tech 'adult', ‘mature’, and ‘sensitive’ content policy that disproportionately silences those sharing accurate, inclusive, and life-affirming information online. Platforms like TikTok and Meta continue to suppress SRHR content through opaque automated decision making - forcing users to distort their language through coded terms like “corn” (porn), and “seggs” (sex) just to be heard. | |
| These systems are not just flawed - they are harmful and exclusionary by design. Under the assumed guise of neutrality and safety, algorithms enact automated censorship perpetuating stigma, marginalising already vulnerable communities, and eroding access to vital, everyday health knowledge. This session unpacks how such systems reflect and reinforce wider anti-rights ideologies, fueling disinformation while punishing those advocating for dignity, access to health education, pleasure, and bodily autonomy. | |
| But resistance is not just disruption - it’s an act of care. Through creative reimaginings like AlgoSpeak, communities are building alternative linguistic systems to outwit suppression and sustain the flow of transformative knowledge. | |
| Join us as we collaboratively unlearn the myth of technological objectivity and reimagine a digital ecosystem where SRHR content is not criminalised, but encouraged. This conversation is a call to co-create tools, tactics, and narratives for a future where technology upholds, rather than undermines, our collective wellbeing. | |
| With this session, we’re want to listen, brainstorm, and co-create, centering the development of AlgoSpeak.net, a community-driven initiative to document and combat algorithmic oppression/censorship: | |
| • Crowdsource emerging terminology and coded language (AlgoSpeak) used to navigate censorship; | |
| • Exchange strategies for resisting algorithmic suppression and preserving SRHR information; | |
| • Critique how big tech governance is shaping the present and future language of SRHR discourse; | |
| • Reimagine how platform regulation and digital policy could center inclusivity, care, and rights-based approaches instead of harm and erasure. | |
| • Brainstorm technical solutions for increasing website security, building open-source code, and ensuring sustainable community input into the site | |
| This session is not just about highlighting harm - it is about unlearning the logics of sovereign control rolled out by big tech globally and embedded in our digital infrastructures, and collectively building alternatives rooted in justice, autonomy, and care and joy.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Armilla AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/214</link><guid isPermaLink="false">214</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 214 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Armilla AI | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Philip Dawson | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/214 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Armilla AI | |
| Description: | |
| Coming soon</description></item><item><title>The sounds of torture in México</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/180</link><guid isPermaLink="false">180</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 180 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The sounds of torture in México | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Sofía González, Ángel María Salvador Ferrer & Juan Pablo Rivas Bejarano | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/180 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The sounds of torture in México | |
| Description: | |
| At Documenta, we recognize that art impacts the way in which we understand and shape the world we live in. That’s why we aim to use artivism (art + activism) as a tool to connect with people and create spaces for reflection and critical dialogue on crucial issues. In this way, we promote participatory and popular processes that encourage reflection and explore alternative solutions through culture and art, particularly regarding access to justice under conditions of equality and non-discrimination. | |
| We use art to amplify the voices of the most vulnerable communities, challenge stigma-based narratives, and support processes of social transformation. | |
| As part of our artivism projects, we developed a series of sound stories: auditory experiences designed to raise awareness about the various forms of torture that persist in México. Activations have been carried out in various locations across Mexico where people can listen to these audio stories and reflect on the issue of torture, in order to raise awareness among the general public. | |
| The stories address the following topics: | |
| "No es mi hija" (She’s Not My Daughter) | |
| A mother whose daughter has gone missing is subjected to violence and stigma when she seeks help from the justice system. | |
| "La Solución" (The Solution) | |
| Two young people in a drug rehabilitation clinic are mistreated by the staff in charge. | |
| "En las mejores manos" (In Good Hands) | |
| An elderly man is physically and psychologically abused by his caregiver in a senior care facility. | |
| "Una vida mejor" (A Better Life) | |
| Two Central American women are intercepted and mistreated by immigration authorities at Mexico’s southern border. | |
| For the festival, we propose an installation where visitors can listen to these audio stories and reflect on the various forms of torture. The space aims to foster dialogue and encourage conversations about what is happening in their own countries. | |
| In order for the audio stories to become an experience, we will install a space where the person can listen to the stories while wearing headphones and blindfolded and really live in these stories for a moment, fostering empathy, awareness and reflection.</description></item><item><title>OFFSITE Community Contributor Meetup</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/228</link><guid isPermaLink="false">228</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 228 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: OFFSITE Community Contributor Meetup | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Karen Kim | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/228 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: OFFSITE Community Contributor Meetup | |
| Description: | |
| This would be a fun experience specifically designed for our community members to gather, connect, and hang out with each other (and the Firefox team!). Activity TBD - most likely be a trivia night, happy hour, or coffee meetup.</description></item><item><title>“Failing Forward”: Glitches, Facial Recognition, and the Politics of Error</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/113</link><guid isPermaLink="false">113</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 113 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: “Failing Forward”: Glitches, Facial Recognition, and the Politics of Error | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Thallita Lima; Luisa Lobato | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/113 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: “Failing Forward”: Glitches, Facial Recognition, and the Politics of Error | |
| Description: | |
| What if glitches weren’t just bugs to be fixed, but cracks that reveal the politics behind the machine? This lab explores the failures of facial recognition technologies (FRT) not as isolated technical errors, but as meaningful disruptions that expose systems of power, racial bias, and surveillance logic. In Brazil, FRT has expanded rapidly through unregulated pilot programs, opaque public-private partnerships, and experimental deployments, often without public consent or oversight. These systems have produced a series of well-documented failures: wrongful arrests, misidentifications, and database inconsistencies. | |
| Rather than seeing failure as a stage to be overcome on the path to "better" technologies, this session invites participants to rethink failure, and the glitch, as an entry point for critique and (re)imagination. | |
| The lab unfolds in four steps: | |
| 1. Contextual framing: We introduce real cases of facial recognition failures in Brazil, mapping how experimentation, opacity, and racialized targeting are normalized under the promise of technological innovation. | |
| 2. Glitch as lens: We discuss the glitch — not just as a technical malfunction, but as a rupture that exposes hidden assumptions in systems. Drawing from glitch feminism, we frame the glitch as a site of refusal, resistance, and possibility. | |
| 3. Art and counter-visioning: We explore artistic practices that engage facial recognition not to refine it, but to expose, distort, and destabilize it. From face-obscuring fashion and adversarial makeup to counter-surveillance installations and speculative video works, we present examples where artists and communities use glitch aesthetics to render themselves unreadable, reclaim visibility, or sabotage the gaze of the machine. | |
| 4. Creative intervention: In small groups, participants will design speculative “glitch-based interventions”: posters, collages, or short texts imagining broken FRT systems, public apologies from failing companies, or campaigns that reclaim the glitch as a form of critique. Prompts will guide the process, such as “Design a face the system can’t read” or “What if the glitch was the feature?” | |
| This session is open to artists, researchers, technologists, and activists, no prior experience needed. By the end of the lab, participants will: rethink failure and glitch as spaces of political insight and creative resistance; discover how critical and artistic practices can disrupt dominant narratives of innovation; and leave equipped to recognize, and amplify, the cracks in the system where new possibilities can emerge.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Nera</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/210</link><guid isPermaLink="false">210</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 210 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Nera | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jean-Francois Gagne | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/210 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Nera | |
| Description: | |
| Nera will be a platform that reduces software costs while helping enterprises not be locked into legacy vendors such SAP, Workday or Oracle.</description></item><item><title>Ubuntu meets African AI: Community-centric approaches for advancing African language technology</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/25</link><guid isPermaLink="false">25</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 25 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ubuntu meets African AI: Community-centric approaches for advancing African language technology | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Deshni Govender; Daniel Brumund; Tajuddeen Gwadabe; Samantha Moyo; Pelonomi Moiloa | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/25 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ubuntu meets African AI: Community-centric approaches for advancing African language technology | |
| Description: | |
| African languages account for less than 1% of the data used to train global AI models, despite Africa comprising one-seventh of the world’s population. Current language resources are disproportionately concentrated in high-resource languages, perpetuating inequities and excluding underrepresented languages from technological advancements. This disparity is especially evident in Africa, where linguistic diversity is vast, yet representation in global AI models remains minimal. At the same time, reliance on big tech for language models fosters dependencies on AI models that do not represent the global majority. This leads to AI systems of sub-par quality that risk harming already marginalised groups - such as rural populations, women, and indigenous language speakers. | |
| But different, more community-centric ways of building AI are not only possible, but already emerging. <a href="https://www.masakhane.io/">Masakhane</a> (which means <i>“let’s build together”</i>) is a grassroots community of over 2,000 African NLP researchers that is at the forefront of building AI by, with and for African communities. In April 2025, the Masakhane Hub for African Languages was launched to address the critical underrepresentation of African languages in AI. It is supported by the <a href="https://www.ai4d-collaborative.org/">AI for Development Funders Collaborative</a>. By developing open-source datasets, AI models, and scalable use cases tailored to local contexts, the Hub will democratize language AI technology. Anchored in community-driven approaches and sharing of critical resources as pan-African digital commons, the Hub aspires to empower over one billion Africans by enhancing equitable access to AI technologies. | |
| This session invites technologists, funders, researchers, policymakers, and community leaders to learn and share practices for community-driven, inclusive language AI in Africa. Join us in uniting diverse efforts—from grassroots community-driven projects to large-scale institutional collaborations—to ensure that African languages are fully represented in the digital future. Together, we can transform AI into a tool that benefits all, bridging gaps and unlocking opportunities for over 1 billion people across the continent. | |
| <b>Facilitators</b> | |
| <ul> | |
| <li> Samantha Moyo, Partnerships & Community Lead, Masakhane Hub</li> | |
| <li>Pelonomi Moiloa, Lelapa.AI</li> | |
| <li>Tajuddeen Gwadabe, Programme Manager, Masakhane Hub</li> | |
| <li>Deshni Govender, GIZ "FAIR Forward - Artificial Intelligence for All"</li> | |
| <li>Daniel Brumund, GIZ "FAIR Forward - Artificial Intelligence for All"</li> | |
| </ul></description></item><item><title>Evaluating AI in High-Stakes Contexts: A Lab on Multilingual, Human Rights-Centered Evaluation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/46</link><guid isPermaLink="false">46</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 46 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Evaluating AI in High-Stakes Contexts: A Lab on Multilingual, Human Rights-Centered Evaluation | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Roya Pakzad | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/46 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Evaluating AI in High-Stakes Contexts: A Lab on Multilingual, Human Rights-Centered Evaluation | |
| Description: | |
| As AI language models become increasingly integrated into humanitarian services – delivering information to refugees, migrants, and displaced communities – questions of safety, trust, and linguistic equity become urgent. Yet, most existing LLM benchmarks fail to account for the complexity of these high-stakes settings. This session introduces participants to an evaluation framework and a prototype web-based platform developed as part of my Mozilla Foundation Fellowship: Human Rights and Linguistic Diversity in AI Evaluation: a Focus on Refugees and Migrants. | |
| During this lab we will explore: | |
| Why standard LLM benchmarks – even multilingual ones – fall short in humanitarian and migration contexts. | |
| Why evaluation frameworks must go beyond accuracy to include human rights, linguistic diversity, and participation from affected communities. | |
| How government agencies and humanitarian organizations can build and use custom evaluation approaches when selecting and deploying AI systems. | |
| Participants will get hands-on experience with a prototype benchmarking and evaluation platform. They will explore: | |
| How different LLMs perform across realistic refugee and migrant service scenarios in multiple languages (e.g., English, Persian, Dari, Arabic, Spanish). | |
| How prompts with or without reasoning (“chain-of-thought”) affect model responses. | |
| How features like “self-critique” and policy-specific instructions change model behavior – for better or worse. | |
| How to assess responses for factual grounding, empathy, cultural relevance, working links and contact info, bias, reasoning quality, and usefulness/timeliness for real-world tasks. | |
| This session is for anyone interested in building or evaluating AI systems for public-good applications, especially in linguistically diverse or high-risk environments. It is ideal for civil society organizations interested in AI evaluation and documenting performance failures, as well as civic technologists, humanitarian professionals, and AI developers working on multilingual evaluation, responsible AI deployment in public services, or community-led benchmarking. | |
| The participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how to: | |
| Design and apply human rights-centered benchmarks | |
| Engage communities in AI evaluation | |
| Document performance failures that matter in the real world</description></item><item><title>Alternative Platforms Booth: Rayhunter (EFF)</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2137</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2137</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2137 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Alternative Platforms Booth: Rayhunter (EFF) | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Paige Collins; Jillian York; Cooper Quintin | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2137 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Alternative Platforms Booth: Rayhunter (EFF) | |
| Description: | |
| Coming soon</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Control: How Metadata Shapes What the World Remembers</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/77</link><guid isPermaLink="false">77</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 77 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Control: How Metadata Shapes What the World Remembers | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Amanda Figueroa; mrcjdawson | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/77 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Control: How Metadata Shapes What the World Remembers | |
| Description: | |
| Museums don’t just preserve objects—they shape the stories we tell about the world. But the tools we use to preserve culture—especially metadata—are built atop inherited systems of power. These systems determine what is remembered, how it is described, and who gets to decide. | |
| This session challenges the myth that digital cultural preservation is neutral. As AI systems ingest and repurpose open-access cultural data, entire worldviews are being distorted, flattened, or erased—without consent or context. At stake is nothing less than the power to define the past, and with it, the future. | |
| Hosted by the Curationist Foundation, this forum shares takeaways from our annual Metadata Learning & Unlearning Summit—a gathering of museum professionals, technologists, and knowledge justice advocates rethinking how digital systems shape cultural memory. From reparative metadata to community-authored descriptions, we’ll explore how to resist extractive approaches to preservation. | |
| We’ll also examine what happens when institutions restrict access to formerly open collections, and the urgent role of independent stewards—like community-led archives and the Internet Archive—in retaining and recontextualizing vulnerable cultural materials. | |
| Participants will respond to curated prompts reflecting on key themes of cultural heritage, metadata, and the future of online collections. We’ll then move into a collaborative phase, identifying shared themes and generating actionable priorities. Global attendees will join via digital tools to participate in real time. | |
| Together, we’ll explore: | |
| • How metadata embeds control—from who is named to what is searchable | |
| • Why AI’s use of scraped heritage data demands ethical oversight | |
| • What “artisanal metadata” looks like—and why slow, dialogic work matters | |
| • How open infrastructures can support community authorship and cultural self-determination | |
| We’ll close with a group brainstorm—online and in person—to co-create a shared set of provocations. | |
| Participants will leave with new tools and urgent questions: | |
| Who is metadata for? Who is missing? What knowledge shouldn’t be flattened into code? And how do we protect memory from being remade by systems that prioritize scale over truth? | |
| We’ll also invite the MozFest community into shaping next year’s Summit, expanding this work globally and building toward justice-oriented cultural infrastructure. | |
| Because when we define what the world remembers, we define what’s possible.</description></item><item><title>Imagination Circle: Rewiring Tech & Philanthropy for Community-Led Futures</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/35</link><guid isPermaLink="false">35</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 35 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Imagination Circle: Rewiring Tech & Philanthropy for Community-Led Futures | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Michelle Baldwin; Alexandra Stef; Sonja Miokovic; Melanie Hui | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/35 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Imagination Circle: Rewiring Tech & Philanthropy for Community-Led Futures | |
| Description: | |
| Overview: | |
| What if AI, Web3, and blockchain weren’t tools of disruption—but of coordination, care, and community control? | |
| In this Imagination Circle, we reframe emerging technologies not as ends in themselves, but as infrastructures for reimagining how philanthropy and capital move, who decides, who benefits, and how value is shared. | |
| Today’s systems of funding and innovation often reinforce top-down control, extractive logics, and inequitable power dynamics. This session brings together funders, technologists, and community leaders to collectively imagine how technology can support new models of collective governance, trust-based giving, and regenerative investment. | |
| What might it look like to build funding ecosystems rooted in solidarity, not scarcity? | |
| Together, we will: | |
| -Examine the default assumptions embedded in philanthropy and capital flow, efficiency, competition, donor control and explore how they mirror extractive tech | |
| -Explore how AI, blockchain, and Web3 can serve as coordination tools for decentralized governance, transparent distribution, and community-led decision-making | |
| -Experiment with AI to surface the many ways communities already give, share, and generate value – from time and care, to data and local knowledge – and explore asset generating models that recognize, value and activate a broader ecosystem of community assets. | |
| -Engage in imagination sprints to share hacks of new models, such as: | |
| *A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for mutual aid funding | |
| *AI-enabled tools to surface community-defined priorities and redistribute resources accordingly | |
| *Blockchain-based systems for participatory budgeting or climate reparations | |
| -Co-create a poetic harvest of what liberatory, tech-enabled philanthropic infrastructures could look like in 2040 | |
| We will use storytelling, speculative design, and systems thinking to explore how we can shift power from funders to communities, and from platforms to people. | |
| Who It’s For: | |
| No technical expertise needed—just a commitment to transformation. | |
| Co-participants will leave with: | |
| -A reimagined view of AI, Web3, and blockchain as tools for community coordination and systemic change | |
| -New relationships and shared language for building post-extractive ecosystems of philanthropy and tech | |
| -Experience creating new ideas through storytelling and collective imagination | |
| Hosts: | |
| Michelle Baldwin, Associate, Equity Cubed; Co-Founder AI for Social Impact Collaborative; Faculty Governance Leadership Ethics, Huron University College; SuperBenefit DAO https://www.linkedin.com/in/michellebaldwin/, in Canada | |
| Alexandra Stef, Collective Learning & Innovation, Inspire Change https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-stef/, in Spain | |
| Sonja Miokovic, Consulting Director, Community Innovation, Tamarack Institute https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonjamiokovic/</description></item><item><title>Beyond Silos & Town Squares: Designing Mesh Networks of Trust</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/224</link><guid isPermaLink="false">224</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 224 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Beyond Silos & Town Squares: Designing Mesh Networks of Trust | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mari Zumbro | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/224 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Beyond Silos & Town Squares: Designing Mesh Networks of Trust | |
| Description: | |
| Today’s social web forces us into closed bubbles or noisy public squares. This talk unlearns that binary by showcasing real-world “mesh” patterns—small, values-aligned circles linked by lightweight bridges—and explores design heuristics for building communities that remain plural yet interoperable. We'll explore how historical social trust models can be revitalized for digital spaces from a startup's on-the-ground perspective</description></item><item><title>When TRex Dreams of Mangoes and Figs</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/179</link><guid isPermaLink="false">179</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 179 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: When TRex Dreams of Mangoes and Figs | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Chris Tegho; Jazmin Morris | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/179 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: When TRex Dreams of Mangoes and Figs | |
| Description: | |
| When TRex Dreams of Mangoes and Figs is an immersive art installation that reimagines waiting in digital spaces as a portal for imagination, and collective dreaming. Inspired by the Google Chrome Dino game that appears during lost internet connections, the installation explores where consciousness drifts during digital "loading states". It invites the audience to enter a phygital landscape that transforms waiting into a playful, reflective experience. | |
| The experience unfolds across two interconnected states, each using experimental, immersive technologies: | |
| 1. Loading: In this partially loaded, low-poly world, glitches and movements immerse participants in an "in-between" state, a space of fragmented anticipation. | |
| 2. Consciousness: A more vibrant, dream-like world featuring mangos and figs. Mangos and figs challenge the traditional, western landscapes seen in digital environments. | |
| This project reinterprets digital extraction by critically engaging with the hidden infrastructures that shape online experiences, particularly those of waiting, loading, and digital liminality. Every online interaction, including moments of waiting, is connected to physical landscapes where resources are extracted. The project uses the loading state to expose hidden connections, with a sensory experience where glitching visuals and fragmented movements mirror the instability of digital access. | |
| It focuses on the unequal distribution of internet access, particularly in regions affected by the extractive economies of digital industries. While some experience high-speed connections, others are routinely disconnected, left in liminal states of waiting. The presence of mangos and figs challenges the dominance of Western-centric digital environments. These fruits, which thrive in tropical and sub-tropical regions, also serve as subtle references to the extractive histories tied to colonial agriculture mirroring the ways in which data and resources are unevenly extracted. | |
| The installation treats the broken link and the frozen loading screen as meaningful sites of reflection and potential instead of errors. It explores the fragility of digital presence and the physical consequences of digital memory, a reminder that even fleeting moments online are anchored to material infrastructures that corrode, glitch, and decay. | |
| It centers the experience on waiting, a temporal void often erased from our digital narratives. It questions the assumption that digital life is seamless or permanent, and highlights how decay, slowness, and interruption can reveal truths about access, extraction, and imbalance. | |
| By reimagining waiting and anticipation in digital spaces, it creates an opportunity for dreams, imagination and creativity in a subtle protest against technologies grasp on our experiences.</description></item><item><title>“Not Violent Enough”: Rewriting the Language of Help in AI and Justice Tech</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/148</link><guid isPermaLink="false">148</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 148 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: “Not Violent Enough”: Rewriting the Language of Help in AI and Justice Tech | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Zanele; Leonora Tima | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/148 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: “Not Violent Enough”: Rewriting the Language of Help in AI and Justice Tech | |
| Description: | |
| In South Africa, GBV survivors are frequently denied protection orders and broader access to justice due to the disjuncture between the ways in which they describe sexual violence and the formalised language recognised by the legal system. Survivors often rely on euphemisms, metaphors, or culturally specific expressions (even when speaking in English) to describe gendered and sexual violence, particularly in communities where direct disclosure may be unsafe, stigmatised, or taboo. These forms of speech are often misunderstood, dismissed, or deemed legally insufficient by justice officials. | |
| This same erasure is mirrored in AI. As legal technologies such as chatbots and large language models (LLMs) are increasingly developed to support or supplement survivors in a broken justice systems, they risk reproducing the same dynamics of exclusion. Instead of translating systems to survivors, tech for justice ends up demanding that survivors translate themselves into systems, that is, to learn how to communicate experiences of sexual violence or ask for help in legal language. | |
| This interactive session draws from GRIT’s ongoing research and the development of Zuzi, a trauma-informed chatbot co-created with GBV survivors in South Africa. Zuzi was designed to support access to legal help by interacting with survivors in culturally relevant ways. In the process, we encountered countless expressions of violence that fall outside formal legal or machine-readable language—yet carry deep meaning and urgency within local contexts. | |
| This talk explores how AI for justice systems misrecognise these expressions, and how participatory approaches to chatbot and LLM development, rooted in survivor experience, can intervene in these patterns of erasure. Through collaborative reflection and design, the session aims to surface practical strategies for building justice technologies that listen differently. | |
| Outcomes: | |
| 1. Understand how LLMs misinterpret survivor narratives when trained on dominant legal language | |
| 2. Engage with real, community-rooted expressions of violence from GRIT’s research and share context-specific examples | |
| 3. Identify how trauma-informed, participatory AI design can bridge linguistic and cultural gaps | |
| 4. Co-create inclusive design strategies for AI that centres survivor language and experience | |
| Build cross-disciplinary dialogue between technologists, legal practitioners, and community organisers</description></item><item><title>Margins No More: Civil Society as a Force in Global Tech Politics</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/65</link><guid isPermaLink="false">65</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 65 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Margins No More: Civil Society as a Force in Global Tech Politics | |
| track: 89 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Kiito Shilongo; Sebastián Calderón; Tim Davies; Angela Chukunzira; Seeta; Marcelle Chagas; Priya Goswami | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/65 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "89", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Margins No More: Civil Society as a Force in Global Tech Politics | |
| Description: | |
| Across Brazil, England, India, Kenya, Namibia and USA organisers have spent the year refining and strengthening civil society movements in their regions! They have come to the realisation that as members of civil society, we have learned the language of organising but not how to actually do it. At the same time, the immense power held by tech oligarchs and governments has led many of us to believe that we need their permission to act. | |
| Over the past years, civil society has been shrinking globally. Many justice-focused tech governance initiatives, whether advocating for participatory governance, decent work, or grassroots policy innovation, have been co-opted by powerful minorities, including Big Tech. Initiatives once rooted in equity and justice are increasingly being used to manufacture public trust and legitimacy, often without delivering real change. Meanwhile, funding for civil society continues to decrease, a trend made starkly visible by decisions taken in early 2025 by major funders in the United States and other western powers.. | |
| These conditions have forced organisers to challenge long-standing assumptions about how influence works in tech governance. Evidence of harm alone does not move policy. Social media metrics are not real life engagement. And being included in a conversation defined by others does not guarantee impact. The courage civil society has shown over the years is undeniable but in this moment of scarcity and opacity, courage alone is not enough. We need a clear, collective message anchored in a shared vision. We need to pool our resources, confront internal disparities, and build the foundations for sustainable, united action. | |
| This forum brings together organisers who have tried, successfully or not, to rally civil society around how tech is developed, governed, and regulated. Structured as an open circle, this session will feature reflections from leading voices, and invite others to share their experiences. We want to hear about your strategies, the challenges you have faced, and the lessons you have learned. In particular, we are focused on the unique difficulties of organising in tech with limited resources and against powerful, well-resourced powers.</description></item><item><title>Women In Technology: Female founders, product leaders and investors building the ecosystem</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/200</link><guid isPermaLink="false">200</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 200 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Women In Technology: Female founders, product leaders and investors building the ecosystem | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Saayeli Mukherji Bruni; Suba Vasudevan; Elana Berkowitz; Mari Zumbro | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/200 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Women In Technology: Female founders, product leaders and investors building the ecosystem | |
| Description: | |
| Women in AI spotlights the visionary female founders, product leaders, and investors shaping the future of artificial intelligence. This MozFest 2025 session explores how women are driving innovation, ethics, and inclusivity in the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem.</description></item><item><title>Small, Local, Just: Reimagining AI for People and Planet</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/129</link><guid isPermaLink="false">129</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 129 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Small, Local, Just: Reimagining AI for People and Planet | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ruth Schmidt; Lisa Gutermuth; Mehan Jayasuriya; Daniel Brumund | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/129 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Small, Local, Just: Reimagining AI for People and Planet | |
| Description: | |
| Technology is never immaterial. From the extraction of rubber and uranium in the DRC to the data quietly harvested through tools like “Facebook Lite,” the histories and infrastructures behind digital systems are deeply material. These processes leave marks on people, places, and ecosystems. And yet, AI is still often treated as if it is simply detached from physical and political realities in some ephemeral ‘cloud’. | |
| This session invites participants to unlearn the myth of tech immateriality by centring environmental justice and material accountability in how we **build, measure, and deploy AI**. Drawing from the [Green Screen Coalition’s manifesto](https://greenscreen.network/en/blog/within-bounds-limiting-ai-environmental-impact/ ), which advocates for bounded, purpose-driven AI, we’ll explore how to design systems within ecological and social limits. | |
| Through examples such as [Indonesia’s coastal communities in Aceh](https://akzente.giz.de/en/ai-climate-resilience-artificial-intelligence), we’ll examine how low-tech, small-scale, domain-specific technologies offer meaningful alternatives to extractive digital infrastructures. We'll explore how movements are already shifting away from large-scale, resource-intensive models (like LLMs powering ChatGPT) toward smaller, community-serving systems that are less harmful and more accountable. | |
| We'll also dig into how to practically **measure AI’s environmental impact**, using tools like CodeCarbon and community-developed frameworks from the Mozilla Technology Fund and GIZ’s FAIR Forward. These tools help answer key questions: How do we assess the energy and material costs of the systems we build and use? | |
| Rather than focusing only on what’s wrong, this session is about reimagining futures. As we reflect on community-centred approaches, we’ll ask: | |
| - What does it look like to build AI that serves local needs instead of global scale? | |
| - How can we ensure that communities, not corporations, decide what is enough? | |
| - What kinds of technologies and accountability measures help us act within planetary and ethical limits? | |
| - In shifting geopolitical landscapes, how does digital misinformation impact the awareness of climate change, and the consequent impact on communities? | |
| Through interactive discussion, we’ll co-create ideas and practices that shift AI development away from extractive, profit-driven norms and toward regenerative, place-based, and materially responsible technologies. Participants will leave with tools, insights, and strategies to challenge the immaterial myth, and begin building AI systems that are grounded, just, and sustainable.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Harmful Tech Systems: A Lab for Reconnection, Joyful Resistance, and Regeneration</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2081</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2081</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2081 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Harmful Tech Systems: A Lab for Reconnection, Joyful Resistance, and Regeneration | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ruth Schmidt; Ifeatu Nnaobi | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2081 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Harmful Tech Systems: A Lab for Reconnection, Joyful Resistance, and Regeneration | |
| Description: | |
| The technologies shaping our world are not neutral. They are built on systems of extraction, oppression, and disconnection—from each other, from the Earth, and even from ourselves. To imagine a truly liberatory tech future, we must begin by unlearning. In this session-lab, we invite participants into a space of experimentation and deep inquiry: What would it mean to compost harmful tech systems and cultivate life-affirming ones rooted in justice, interconnection, and joy? What if, together, we could co-create a tool-kit to help guide us along our journey of unlearning and reimagining? | |
| We will explore the possibilities of **fractal democracy**—small-scale embodied practices that ripple into larger systems of change. Inspired by nature’s patterns, Indigenous wisdom, and gift economies, we will engage in exercises that ask: How do we practice democracy not just in institutions, but in our daily relationships—with friends, with our environment, across species? What would tech and AI look like if they emerged from shared responsibility and reverence for all life? | |
| Drawing on the symbolism of **mushrooms** as agents of detoxification and transformation, and **roots** as reminders to get to the source, we will test action-oriented strategies for dismantling dominant tech paradigms. Together, we will compost what must die—capitalism, technocolonialism, the broligarchy—and make space for new seeds to grow: technologies grounded in community, mutual care, and Earth compatibility. These principles and emergent learnings will feed into our **living toolkit**, evolving alongside us. | |
| This lab is a space to reimagine through movement, conversation, collective dreaming, and democratic play. To practice emergence and cultivate the skills needed to get into right relationship with change. | |
| We centre **joy** not as a distraction, but as a deliberate strategy for connection and transformation. Living from the inside out, grounded in our deepest sources of vitality, opens up new possibilities for how we engage with the world. When we allow that inner power to guide our actions, we move with greater clarity, responsibility, and purpose. In this spirit, we call upon joy as a fuel for our resistance and for building technologies rooted in collective liberation. | |
| Join us in this session to test new pathways, share wisdom and reconnect—to self, to others, to the Earth.</description></item><item><title>Patchworking Tech Sovereignty from the margins: The past, present & future of the MetzIntranet</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/34</link><guid isPermaLink="false">34</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 34 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Patchworking Tech Sovereignty from the margins: The past, present & future of the MetzIntranet | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Luisa Balaban | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/34 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Patchworking Tech Sovereignty from the margins: The past, present & future of the MetzIntranet | |
| Description: | |
| This session will highlight the resilient and modular architecture of the MetziIntranet - a lightweight, adaptive database manager web application powered by Perl, based on open technology, and rooted in a polyvalent framework assembled in the early 2000s which served as the greenhouse for multiple sovreign digital spaces. Originally conceived as a multipurpose web framework, with the help of a feminist technological sovereignty team over the last two decades it morphed into a data management system attuned to the needs of [Metzineres](https://metzineres.org/) - a harm-reduction shelter based in Barcelona for gender-diverse people who use drugs and have survived situation of violence. | |
| Far from resembling the monolithic structures of mainstream platforms, MetziIntranet resists the extractivist logics of BigTech’s database managers. Instead, it embodies a ciberfeminist tool, where care and intersectionality are written into the code. Its light digital footprint proved a powerful capacity to generate [intersectional indicators](https://metzineres.org/es/investigacion/) - tools that have proved valuable in revealing the hidden strata of systemic vulnerability endured by the womxn marginalized by the war on drugs who visit Metzineres. | |
| In this session, we will trace the co-evolutionary phases that the MetziIntranet has been through - from a rudimentary codebase into a complex tool that allows the harm-reduction team to monitor 62.000 accompaniments to 650 womxn over 8 years - mapping its shifting functions and iterative redesigns in response to the needs of Metzineres’ team. | |
| We will explore how the Perl-based structure enabled fluid adaptation to the evolving needs of the intervention team as well as to those that visited Metzineres, facilitating effective monitoring, responsive support strategies, and evidence-building for public policy that honors the complexity of the lived experiences of womxn that use drugs and are survivors of violence. | |
| This talk aims to be a collaborative imagining space for speculating about how MetziIntranet might continue to grow beyond the boundaries of dominant tech paradigms. With concepts like decolonial design, patchworked resilience, and tech sovereignty as our compass, we’ll brainstorm future possibilities rooted in intersectionality regarding how the MetzIntranet can play an active role in generating justice for those womxn whose human rights are systemically infringed. | |
| Together, we envision what it means to build feminist technology: not as a tool design for profit, but as a craft of survival, a tool of care, and as a seeds of political transformation.</description></item><item><title>Context is All You Need: The Collective Land Grab Reshaping the Internet w/ Mozilla AI x koodos</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/230</link><guid isPermaLink="false">230</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 230 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Context is All You Need: The Collective Land Grab Reshaping the Internet w/ Mozilla AI x koodos | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jad Esber; Apurva Chitnis; John Dickerson | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/230 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Context is All You Need: The Collective Land Grab Reshaping the Internet w/ Mozilla AI x koodos | |
| Description: | |
| **Suggested pre-reading:** ["Context Is All You Need"](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5277474) | |
| The most valuable resource in AI isn’t **compute** or **algorithms** — it’s **context**: the full range of real-time signals from user behavior, environment, and intent. Your mood, calendar invites, coding patterns, music tastes, and health data are being woven into the memories of **digital twins** that anticipate your needs before you articulate them. | |
| Whoever controls our context has the power. | |
| > The question isn’t just who will win the race to aggregate our context — but whose interests that victory will serve. | |
| --- | |
| ## The Collective Land Grab for Context | |
| This forum explores the **competition for context** that’s reshaping the internet and determining who profits from it. With the rise of AI, we stand at a crossroads. The technology holds genuine promise — but it could just as easily amplify existing problems. If we continue to sleepwalk toward hyperscale and centralization, future generations will inherit a world far more dystopian than our own. | |
| Either way, the future of computing will be **hyper-personalized**. The question is whether that personalization serves human agency — or keeps us scrolling the shallows, stripped of it. | |
| It asks: | |
| - What happens when context becomes currency? | |
| - How are platforms racing to capture it? | |
| - And how might we **center the individual**, not the platform? | |
| --- | |
| ## The Context Spectrum | |
| > *Not all interfaces are created equal.* | |
| Every interface captures a different layer of who we are — together forming a **composite portrait of the self**: | |
| - **Chats** reveal thought patterns and mental models. | |
| - **Calendars** show priorities and relationships. | |
| - **Wearables** surface physiological and emotional states. | |
| - **Creative tools** like Figma or Linear expose craft and rhythm. | |
| - **Media** and **code** reflect worldview, taste, and reasoning. | |
| How these layers intersect defines our **“memory fabric.”** | |
| Design determines how much of it we’re willing to share: interfaces that feel natural and reciprocal build trust; extractive ones lose it. | |
| As we move from **declarative** to **ambient** context — through smart glasses, always-on microphones, and continuous sensing — the frontier of AI shifts from raw intelligence to **context awareness**. | |
| > **Who should we trust with access to what we see, hear, and feel?**</description></item><item><title>Solving AI Agent Memory with Reasoning Models</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/207</link><guid isPermaLink="false">207</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 207 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Solving AI Agent Memory with Reasoning Models | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Vince Trost | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/207 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Solving AI Agent Memory with Reasoning Models | |
| Description: | |
| Large Language Models (LLMs) are evolving from text predictors into logical reasoners with the potential to revolutionize how we engage with knowledge, design systems, and create digital tools. Yet their power is constrained by the limits of context—short-term memory and engineering workarounds that restrict their ability to sustain deep reasoning across tasks and time. | |
| This session features Vince Trost, co-founder of Plastic Labs, whose work explores extending LLM memory and building systems that transcend context engineering. Drawing from his experiments and real-world applications, Vince will outline a new design paradigm for reasoning systems—one that enables continuity, resilience, and human–AI collaboration at scale.</description></item><item><title>Rethinking AI from the Ground Up: Building sustainable AI ecosystems for local communities</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/87</link><guid isPermaLink="false">87</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 87 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Rethinking AI from the Ground Up: Building sustainable AI ecosystems for local communities | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Anjali Mazumder, Nyalleng Moorosi & Jat Singh | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/87 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Rethinking AI from the Ground Up: Building sustainable AI ecosystems for local communities | |
| Description: | |
| **The risk that ‘large-scale’ AI won’t serve local communities is real!** | |
| As excitement around generative AI and large-scale models continues to grow, the risk emerges that such technologies may not serve local communities effectively. AI systems designed for the majority, typically based on Western-centric assumptions, often fail to meet the unique needs of minority communities. With 88% of the global population living outside the West, AI systems transplanted from Western contexts frequently do not work as intended and can inadvertently harm diverse local populations. Additionally, as governments and corporations debate AI regulation and offer “assurances,” these efforts often overlook or exclude the needs, contexts, and values of local communities, particularly in the Global South. | |
| This Forum aims to shift the focus towards building AI systems that are sustainable and tailored to local needs, bringing together technologists, researchers, civil society advocates, and others working on AI technologies designed for specific communities. Through a combination of real-world stories, interactive exercises, and expert-led discussions, participants will explore what works, what doesn’t and what’s needed in creating sustainable AI systems and their infrastructure for local contexts. | |
| Key components of the session include: | |
| Interactive Storytelling & Surveys (20min): Participants will engage with real-world case studies from Brazil, Argentina, Oceania, South Africa, etc. learning from those who have developed AI systems for their local communities. For each story, participants will be surveyed on how they would approach the situation and why, followed by Small Group Discussions (10min) examining how to rupture the dominance of large, networked platforms and shift the current ecosystem, which is heavily influenced by big tech and Western perspectives. We will then have a Facilitated Discussion (20min) with storytellers who will share their strategies, successes, and challenges. The approach aims to highlight tensions between local values and Western-centric approaches, allowing participants to reflect on how different cultural and sociopolitical backgrounds influence interpretation and implementation of AI technologies, and insights on how to build human-centered, value-sensitive AI solutions that serve diverse, local communities. | |
| “Wrap-Up & What’s Next” will provide a summary of key takeaways, including practical approaches to advancing AI development and governance in local contexts and produce a paper with key findings and insights. This will foster a collaborative spirit, laying groundwork for future research and coalitions focused on building sustainable AI ecosystems for communities outside the mainstream tech frameworks,</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Isolation Through Tech that Connects</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/117</link><guid isPermaLink="false">117</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 117 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Isolation Through Tech that Connects | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Eunice Njeri Mwangi; Kadian Davis-Owusu | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/117 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Isolation Through Tech that Connects | |
| Description: | |
| Social isolation is not just a personal feeling. It is a systemic outcome, built into the very technologies and design choices that shape our digital lives. In this interactive session, we will confront the uncomfortable truth: many tools that promise connection often amplify disconnection, especially for children,young adults, elders, migrants, and neurodivergent individuals. But what if we flipped the script? | |
| This session invites you to unlearn tech-driven isolation by challenging and uncovering the systems that fuel it and reimagining how digital tools and social robots can nurture meaningful human connection. We will explore how individualism, efficiency-obsessed design, and surveillance capitalism have turned attention into a commodity and numbed our emotional bandwidth. Then we will shift toward new design futures, where tech supports presence instead of performance, interdependence instead of self-sufficiency, and care instead of control. | |
| Guided by human-centered design, value-sensitive design, responsible computing, and speculative thinking, we will work with playful, hands-on activities that explore what technology for social connectedness and a sense of belonging might look like. In the Connection Mapping session, participants will surface patterns in their own digital lives. Through Postcards from the Future, we will dream up robots that reduce loneliness instead of solely automating care. In our Silent Pair-Build session, we will co-create symbols of connection using only nonverbal cues. | |
| Participants will apply principles like empathy, inclusion, privacy, and transparency through these collaborative exercises, which invite critical reflection, storytelling, and imagination. We will ask not only what social robots and digital companions can do, but what they should do, and most importantly, who gets to decide. | |
| This is not a session for passive listening. It is for makers, educators, technologists, activists, and curious minds who believe that empathy is a design goal, not a side effect. It is for those who want to ask better questions, like: What if technology was built for connection? What if empathy was the design goal? | |
| Together, we will sketch ideas, question defaults, and co-build futures where digital tools create space for nuance, vulnerability, and co-regulation. Where social robots are not designed to replace human care but to amplify it. Where everyone, including those on the margins, shapes what connection looks like. | |
| It’s time to unlearn isolation and rewire the digital world for connection, care, and community.</description></item><item><title>BITCOIN ART</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/181</link><guid isPermaLink="false">181</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 181 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: BITCOIN ART | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Aksana | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/181 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: BITCOIN ART | |
| Description: | |
| Bitcoin Threads is a hand-embroidered art installation that weaves the story of Bitcoin into textile form. Each piece is carefully stitched using traditional embroidery techniques to represent the resilience, decentralization, and beauty of Bitcoin culture. | |
| Bringing the craft of cross-stitch embroidery into the digital age, 5Ksana transforms colorful threads into symbols of financial freedom and individual empowerment. Her work connects old-world craftsmanship with the modern revolution of digital money - proving that art, like Bitcoin, transcends borders and time.</description></item><item><title>Breaking the Code: Feminist Approaches to AI and Social Robots</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/16</link><guid isPermaLink="false">16</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 16 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Breaking the Code: Feminist Approaches to AI and Social Robots | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Patrice Caire | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/16 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Breaking the Code: Feminist Approaches to AI and Social Robots | |
| Description: | |
| How can we build AI and robots that reflect diverse ways of thinking, relating, and creating—rather than replicating dominant systems of control and exclusion? | |
| In this interactive session, AI researcher and artist Dr. Patrice Caire invites participants into a critical and playful exploration of feminist approaches to technology. Drawing on her interdisciplinary projects—such as Cooperatives Robots, which stages surreal encounters between humans, drones and humanoids—and her research on social robots in public spaces, Dr. Caire challenges the default assumptions built into AI and robotic design. | |
| Using live examples and stories, Dr. Caire will unpack how social machines are shaped by cultural narratives, and how artistic experimentation can reveal and rewire the values embedded in technological systems. | |
| To bring these ideas to life, the session includes participatory activities, such as: | |
| • “Design a Robot Persona”: Small groups quickly sketch a robot character based on values like care, resistance, or ambiguity. How does this shift their expectations of what a robot can be or do? | |
| • “Whose Voice Is That?”: A quick-fire guessing game based on robot voice samples—inviting reflection on bias, authority, and cultural assumptions embedded in vocal interfaces. | |
| These playful moments are designed to surface critical questions, among which: Who gets to define intelligence? What is erased in the pursuit of "neutral" design? How can creative practices help us imagine technologies that center on complexity, difference, and accountability? | |
| Bio (Short): Dr. Patrice Caire (PhD in Computer Sciences, AI) is an artist-scientist bridging technology and creative expression. As a researcher specializing in AI and social robotics, she has published over 50 scientific papers. Her multimedia installations have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, Luxembourg's Museum of Modern Art, and the Center for the Arts in San Francisco. This dual expertise allows her to approach AI development from both rigorous scientific and deeply human creative perspectives. Dr. Caire's work demonstrates that we can--and should--rethink AI and technology to create alternatives to harmful tech systems, making her a leading voice in the development of ethical and feminist AI. (More at https://patricecaire.com) | |
| This session welcomes artists, scientists, technologists, educators, activists, and anyone curious about rethinking AI, tech and the machines we live with.</description></item><item><title>Beyond Radical Openness: Rethinking Licensing (and Equity) in Community-Contributed Language Data</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/107</link><guid isPermaLink="false">107</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 107 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Beyond Radical Openness: Rethinking Licensing (and Equity) in Community-Contributed Language Data | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Deshni Govender; Miguel Morachimo; Daniel Brumund; Mark Irura; Dr. Lilian | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/107 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Beyond Radical Openness: Rethinking Licensing (and Equity) in Community-Contributed Language Data | |
| Description: | |
| Open data has often been advocated as the pathway to inclusion and innovation, but openness alone does not guarantee equity. In fact, for many language communities, especially those from the Global Majority with histories of colonial extraction, radical openness can lead to new forms of exploitation. This session interrogates the limitations of Open Access or Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licensing models, currently the standard for community-contributed datasets in language AI, such as Mozilla Common Voice, and explores more nuanced, community-centered alternatives. | |
| Drawing on insights from direct engagement with the Dholuo language community in Kenya, in partnership with Maseno University (supported by Common Voice and FAIR Forward), this session will share reflections from co-design efforts that question the assumption that CC0 licensing is universally beneficial. For communities whose data holds deep cultural, spiritual, or social value, "open by default" can mean loss of control, appropriation, and harm. | |
| We will explore what it means to reclaim agency in data governance through modular, adaptable licensing approaches (e.g. allowing openness for educational purposes but not for commercial uses) that reflect the specific values and needs of language communities. Participants will learn about alternative licensing models and discuss how platforms like Common Voice collecting language data can move toward more ethical, flexible systems, both technically and legally, that honour community preferences and benefit-sharing. | |
| This session is not only about Dholuo or one particular initiative. It aims to surface broader questions and strategies relevant to other Global Majority language communities: How can we ensure communities retain decision-making power over how their data is used? How can benefit from using this data be shared more equitably? And what are the technical and governance pathways needed to shift from extractive data practices to just, participatory models? | |
| We invite technologists, linguists, community organizers, and open data advocates to join us in rethinking what ethical openness could look like, beyond the binary of “open” or “closed”, towards truly inclusive and empowering data and AI futures. | |
| Speakers: | |
| <ul> | |
| <li>Dr Lilian Wanzare, Language Community Associate, Common Voice | Maseno University, Kenya </li> | |
| <li>Miguel Morachimo, Mozilla</li> | |
| <li>Deshni Govender, "FAIR Forward - Artificial Intelligence for All", GIZ </li> | |
| </li> | |
| </ul></description></item><item><title>UX Hard Reset: How Agents Could Be a Do-Over for Design</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/229</link><guid isPermaLink="false">229</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 229 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: UX Hard Reset: How Agents Could Be a Do-Over for Design | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Paul Canetti | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/229 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: UX Hard Reset: How Agents Could Be a Do-Over for Design | |
| Description: | |
| As a professor at Columbia Business School, I’ve taught my "Intro to UX" course largely the same way for a decade. But now, everything is changing. | |
| AI agents are completely redefining what it means to interact with software, and default assumptions are shifting right underneath our feet. Popular chat apps like ChatGPT and Claude are redefining norms, but they represent just the tip of the agentic iceberg. | |
| I am contributing to this reimagining firsthand as the co-founder and CEO of Skej*, an AI scheduling assistant. We are building a new type of UX that has never existed before. Skej lives inside your email, in your text chats, as a "co-worker" on Slack or Microsoft Teams. It's not an app or a website—it's more like a person, with an email address and a phone number. | |
| And Skej corresponds not only with you, the primary user, but also with others on your behalf. It is representing you out in the world. | |
| Other AI agents can shop, do research, and generate reports. They navigate the web like we do—‘seeing’ pages, moving cursors, clicking links—all without lifting a proverbial finger. And these are just the first class of agents. | |
| It's a bit like autonomous vehicles in that software agents need to drive on the roads built for humans, namely the internet as it is today. | |
| But moving forward into an agent-first world, will we start to re-design the web for non-human actors as first class citizens? Or will we ditch visual UI altogether if no biological eyes will ever see it? Or will websites and apps cease to exist at all as all interaction moves to natural language, and agents will deal purely in data transfer amongst themselves. | |
| The future is still unwritten. We are living through one of, if not the most singularly important moments in the history of software design. It is up to this generation of founders, designers, developers, vibe coders, and ultimately this generation of users, that will define what the next paradigm will look like. It is an opportunity to course-correct entrenched patterns, a time to reflect, and a chance to design the future we want. | |
| *Skej is a proud Mozilla Ventures portfolio company, and their team suggested I submit a proposal!</description></item><item><title>Social Enterprise!: A Cinematic Reboot of Capitalism from the Mind of an African AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/94</link><guid isPermaLink="false">94</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 94 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Social Enterprise!: A Cinematic Reboot of Capitalism from the Mind of an African AI | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Samukhele | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/94 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Social Enterprise!: A Cinematic Reboot of Capitalism from the Mind of an African AI | |
| Description: | |
| My talk uses my manic episode and cinematic knowledge to reframe how we imagine capitalism, innovation, and value. I introduce Cowrie Shell—born out of a moment of radical clarity—as a vision for future enterprise. Rooted in community benefit, Cowrie Shell is proof that companies can be both ethical and profitable. | |
| I trace the roots of social enterprise, its variations, and how the pandemic revealed the need for radical reimagination. My talk will make a compelling case for ditching hypergrowth in favour of regenerative systems that build local wealth and prioritize lived impact.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning AI - How Innovative Governance And Products Can Foster Responsible Development of AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/241</link><guid isPermaLink="false">241</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 241 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning AI - How Innovative Governance And Products Can Foster Responsible Development of AI | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Anna Spitznagel; Emre Kazim; Karthik Ramakrishnan; Camilla de Coverly Veale | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/241 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning AI - How Innovative Governance And Products Can Foster Responsible Development of AI | |
| Description: | |
| In this session, participants will learn how innovative governance processes and tools can support responsible, compliant, and efficient AI development (across both GenAI and ML systems). We will share best practices from Mozilla policy makers and technologists within the Mozilla Ventures portfolio: Holistic AI, Trail, and Armilla AI.</description></item><item><title>Find Your Place in Space & Time | Restorative Mat Pilates - Session 1</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/232</link><guid isPermaLink="false">232</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 232 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Find Your Place in Space & Time | Restorative Mat Pilates - Session 1 | |
| track: 88 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Carli Cole | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/232 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "88", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Find Your Place in Space & Time | Restorative Mat Pilates - Session 1 | |
| Description: | |
| Join us for a 25-minute restorative mat Pilates class designed to ground you in space and time, while cultivating a deeper mind-body connection. | |
| This all-levels class offers a gentle movement experience focused on breath, mobility, concentration, and coordination. Through intentional movement and breath, we’ll quiet external noise and turn inward, grounding us in the present. | |
| Whether you're new to Pilates or an experienced mover, this session provides a supportive space to connect and reset your nervous system.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Germ Network</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/219</link><guid isPermaLink="false">219</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 219 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Germ Network | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Kat Lu | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/219 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Germ Network | |
| Description: | |
| Your world, not ours. You control who can find you, and all connections are mutual opt-in, with no recommendations or introductions from Germ. Your friends can’t even share your contact without your permission. | |
| We’re bringing the power of Germ’s secure chats to AT Protocol, the social layer that powers Bluesky.</description></item><item><title>With water</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/174</link><guid isPermaLink="false">174</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 174 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: With water | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Montse Ollés Roig, David van Walderveen, Kaspar Ravel, and Antoine Begon | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/174 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: With water | |
| Description: | |
| The sassy fish is a game and co-creation project investigating the materiality of digital infrastructure and how it influences the way we perceive our understanding of technology and its environmental impacts. Through interaction and decision-making, the user encounters statements and dilemmas posed by power and AI technologies, with the objective to save the fish. | |
| The game is developed through open-source tools and it is grounded in humour, critical environmental awareness and literacy. It ultimately aims to invite the audience to reflect on how current digital technology infrastructures hinder our digital agency, inviting to reflect upon a desirable digitalisation.</description></item><item><title>Decidim: Participation for social change?</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2113</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2113</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2113 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Decidim: Participation for social change? | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Carolina Romero Cruz; Nil Homedes | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2113 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Decidim: Participation for social change? | |
| Description: | |
| Since its beginnings, Decidim has evolved mainly in response to the needs of public administrations. After eight years of continuous development and improvement, a new question arises: how can we bring the platform’s design closer to the organizations and social movements working for social change? | |
| In this session, we will share the conclusions of the workshop held during the Decidim Fest and open a space for discussion on the main challenges and the roadmap to achieve this goal.</description></item><item><title>Human-Centred Approach To Building Community</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/197</link><guid isPermaLink="false">197</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 197 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Human-Centred Approach To Building Community | |
| track: 25 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Dorcas Owinoh; Deril Okoth | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/197 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "25", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Human-Centred Approach To Building Community | |
| Description: | |
| For 12 years, I have documented my community's journey of growth through the lens of my camera, capturing the heartbeat of a community that has blossomed from a small group of 10 university students to a vibrant ecosystem of over 12,000 techies, entrepreneurs, innovators and creators. | |
| Dipping into my rich archive of historical photographs taken during the infancy of my community to the present day, I will showcase our story of growth, resilience and change. Each image will represent a moment in time, meet up by meet up, event by event, programme by programme, that has helped shape us into a vibrant, globally-recognised tech community. | |
| This installation will be more than just a nostalgic journey. I will elaborate on the evolution of community-building based on adaptive systems. I'll look back at how we implemented human-centred design principles, prioritising collaboration and tapping into the lived experiences of our community. I will show how we used feedback from listening closely to the needs of young people, women, students, developers, and entrepreneurs within my community to shape programs, spaces, and partnerships. | |
| My installation will show how systems changed as my community grew. How we shifted from informal meetups in coffee shops to structured meetups in a rented space/innovation hub. From spontaneous events to a well-coordinated calendar of programs aligned with long-term outcomes. How we redesigned our governance structures, introduced open-access learning tools, embraced agile development, and embedded inclusivity into the very fabric of our work. | |
| I will showcase the evolution of online conversations about my community. I will bring up old tweets, for good measure, from the early days of "Let's meet at coffee shop X to talk about Python" to latter-day tweets like "Hosting a multinational consortium of start-ups working on climate change" | |
| I will showcase the evolution and emergence of smaller innovation hubs from within the larger community we have built over a decade, the governance policies that we have influenced based on our human-centred approach, as well as direct investments that have benefited community members. | |
| My installation will be a story of building more than just a tech community. It will be the story of nurturing a resilient, self-sustaining ecosystem in Kisumu, Kenya that will leave an indelible mark on festival attendees.</description></item><item><title>Undersea and Unseen</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/91</link><guid isPermaLink="false">91</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 91 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Undersea and Unseen | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nadia Nadesan | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/91 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Undersea and Unseen | |
| Description: | |
| This performance lecture excavates the buried material and labor histories beneath the seamless surface of the internet. Centering gutta-percha and rubber—tree-derived substances vital to early submarine cables, we trace the entangled roots of global communication through colonial extraction, plantation economies, and ancestral labor. The work combines storytelling, archival fragments, speculative visualizations, and tactile prompts to unlearn the myth of digital immateriality. | |
| Rubber was introduced by British colonists to Singapore in 1877, journeying from Brazil through Kew Gardens in London and then Sri Lanka. Within a decade, slash-and-burn farmers in remote parts of Southeast Asia began planting rubber trees on cultivated plots. Malaysia, with its fertile soil and wet climate, became ideal for rubber cultivation. After a surge in global demand in the 1890s, rubber joined tin as a key Malayan export. By the 1930s, Malaysia produced half the world’s rubber. | |
| These histories are not abstract. My great grandfather was a rubber tapper brought to Malaysia as indentured labor. His hands tapped the trees that made it possible for global cables to function. European empires built submarine cable networks, starting with the 1858 transatlantic telegraph and extending to the Java-Australia connection in 1871. While European firms owned the plantations and infrastructure, it was Chinese and Indian workers, many forcibly relocated, who powered them. | |
| Following theorists like Mezzadra and Neilson, this lecture emphasizes that labor is central to all extraction, whether of rubber, silver, or data. To understand the environmental and political cost of AI today, we must connect dispersed processes: resource mining, land clearing, water use, data processing, and algorithmic exploitation. These systems are hard to see together, which is why this performance includes a visual map of these flows, along with tactile demonstrations using raw and processed rubber to re-embody this history. | |
| This is not only a history lesson—it is an invitation to rethink touch and connectivity. Rubber is not just a commodity or conduit; it holds the memory of forests, plantations, and people. By drawing attention to the feel of materials and the weight of networks, this lecture challenges dominant, immaterial metaphors like “the cloud.”</description></item><item><title>Mapping Governmental Hacking: A Collaborative Forum on Surveillance and Sovereignty in the Global South</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/105</link><guid isPermaLink="false">105</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 105 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Mapping Governmental Hacking: A Collaborative Forum on Surveillance and Sovereignty in the Global South | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Caymmi | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/105 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Mapping Governmental Hacking: A Collaborative Forum on Surveillance and Sovereignty in the Global South | |
| Description: | |
| The session will present a methodology for using web scraping with Python to navigate official documents and identify keywords related to suppliers of harmful surveillance and government hacking technologies. I will share preliminary findings from an ongoing investigation focused on my home state, Bahia, in Brazil. In many cases, the software used in Brazil is developed by foreign companies, raising serious concerns about national sovereignty and the external control of sensitive state functions. demonstrate how news articles and investigative reports feed and refine our searches for contracts, bids, and ordinances that document the procurement of closed-source intelligence software. I will walk participants through a Python script I developed, using targeted keywords like Cellebrite, Mercure, UFED, Falcon Neo, Clearview, Paterva, and Snap Sinapses Desktop, to automatically crawl the DOE-BA website and map patterns in the acquisition and deployment of these surveillance tools. | |
| We will also explore the practical use of Brazil’s Access to Information Law (LAI) alongside its American counterpart, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as vital instruments for transparency and civic engagement. I will offer concrete advice on crafting LAI and FOIA requests, navigating public portals, and extracting meaningful data sets. Participants will learn how to cross-reference these official records with investigative news coverage, both national and international, to build a richer, more nuanced understanding of government surveillance procurement. This approach highlights how researchers and activists can collaboratively assemble a robust, evidence-based map of state hacking practices, even amid expanding surveillance infrastructures. | |
| Finally, we will broaden the discussion to consider how this approach might be adapted to other Global South contexts, comparing experiences of technological sovereignty and participatory governance. Together, we will reflect on how local communities can leverage open-source tools and scraping methodologies to monitor purchases of hacking technologies, challenge opaque contracts, and advocate for inclusive public-policy frameworks. By the end of this forum, participants will leave equipped with a clear set of best practices for accessing and analyzing official documents, situating these findings within global debates on privacy and power, and contributing to a collaborative research network that strengthens Global South sovereignty against the influence of major technology firms.</description></item><item><title>Necrobiotechnopolitics: Resisting to the End of the World in the Age of AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/30</link><guid isPermaLink="false">30</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 30 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Necrobiotechnopolitics: Resisting to the End of the World in the Age of AI | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Veronyka Gimenes; Amanda Claro | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/30 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Necrobiotechnopolitics: Resisting to the End of the World in the Age of AI | |
| Description: | |
| We are living under the rule of necrobiotechnopolitics—a new phase of digital colonialism where technology, powered by AI, organizes not only data but life, death, and the distribution of existence itself. This isn’t just about misinformation or privacy: it’s about how algorithmic systems, platform governance, and AI infrastructures reproduce and amplify centuries of racial, gendered, and class-based exploitation. | |
| Digital colonialism has a body. It has gender, race, and class. It is white, masculine, cis-heteronormative, and extractive. It operates at planetary scale, feeding on the labor, data, and resources of the Global South while accelerating climate collapse and deepening inequalities. | |
| The emergence of generative AI marks an inflection point. Behind the narratives of “innovation” and “efficiency,” there is an empire of extraction—of data, of cognitive labor, of identity, of land, of energy. AI is the latest weapon in a centuries-old war of colonial control, now coded, automated, and distributed. | |
| Big Tech has come out of the closet. It no longer hides behind the myth of neutrality. It openly consolidates power, aligns with state surveillance, border regimes, and capitalist geopolitics—from the U.S. to China—while marketing inclusion and ethics as PR strategies. | |
| In this talk, we connect these dots: from algorithmic supremacy to necrobiopolitics, from platform governance to climate injustice. We offer a transfeminist and anti-colonial framework to understand how digital infrastructures are not broken—they are working exactly as designed: to sustain a world built on hierarchies of race, gender, class, and species. | |
| But this is not just a critique. This is a call to action. | |
| We will share concrete methodologies, conceptual tools, and organizing practices from our work at the intersection of gender, technology, and digital rights. Rooted in the experiences of trans, queer, and racialized communities in the Global South, this session invites participants to imagine, build, and sustain counter-infrastructures of resistance. | |
| Because resisting Big Tech is not only about fixing the internet. It’s about refusing a world designed to be unlivable for most. And about coding a future where technology serves life—not extraction, not control, not death. | |
| This is how we resist to the end of the world—and beyond.</description></item><item><title>Bread&Net: Decentralizing the Conversation on Digital Rights in WANA</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/103</link><guid isPermaLink="false">103</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 103 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Bread&Net: Decentralizing the Conversation on Digital Rights in WANA | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Saleem Zein; Mohamad Najem | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/103 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Bread&Net: Decentralizing the Conversation on Digital Rights in WANA | |
| Description: | |
| Since 2018, Bread&Net has evolved from a regional unconference into a critical platform that shapes digital rights conversations across West Asia and North Africa (WANA). Organized by SMEX, Bread&Net brings together activists, technologists, journalists, artists, and policymakers to challenge centralized control over digital spaces and advocate for open, inclusive, and rights-based tech governance. | |
| In this session, we’ll take participants through the story of Bread&Net: how it emerged in Beirut amidst a shifting political and technological landscape; how it has grown to center local voices and alternative models of tech governance; and what we’ve learned from the 2024 edition, including key challenges and emerging possibilities. | |
| We’ll also reflect on SMEX’s broader mission: advancing freedom of expression and the right to privacy in WANA through research and reporting, monitoring state and tech companies’ policies, protecting the safety and security of online users, and collaborating with regional advocates to sustain a safer digital space. Recognizing that digital rights affect all aspects of our communities, we are also expanding our outreach to work with educational institutions, such as universities, and engaging with tech entrepreneurs to bridge critical gaps between innovation and rights-based frameworks.</description></item><item><title>Can Ads Ever Be Trustworthy?</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/78</link><guid isPermaLink="false">78</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 78 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Can Ads Ever Be Trustworthy? | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Suba Vasudevan; Katie Eyton; Marty Swant | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/78 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Can Ads Ever Be Trustworthy? | |
| Description: | |
| As digital platforms continue to monetize attention, targeted advertising has become both a cornerstone of the internet economy and a flashpoint for public concern. Can we build an internet where advertising respects user autonomy, promotes safety, and earns trust? Or is the very model fundamentally flawed?</description></item><item><title>Decolonising Math with Soft Codes and Domestic Design</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/128</link><guid isPermaLink="false">128</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 128 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Decolonising Math with Soft Codes and Domestic Design | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nadia Nadesan | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/128 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Decolonising Math with Soft Codes and Domestic Design | |
| Description: | |
| In this lab, we turn to kolams—geometric patterns drawn daily at the thresholds of Tamil homes—as a living archive of relational design. Traditionally drawn by women and girls in rice flour, kolams are more than decoration or ritual; they encode deep mathematical and computational logic. These patterns have influenced how computers process visual language, and within their curves and grids lie at least four foundational mathematical concepts: infinity, array grammars, symmetry, and fractals. | |
| Kolams are ephemeral, generative, and collectively held. Through this session, participants will explore how kolams challenge extractive design norms and offer an alternative design framework rooted in ecological reciprocity, hospitality, and embedded intelligence. | |
| This workshop invites participants to engage with kolams not by extracting them as a visual aesthetic, but by learning through the act of drawing and reflecting—unlearning dominant design norms through embodied practice and ancestral computation. Participants will leave with a deeper understanding of how design can emerge from intimate, relational, and ecological contexts and explore how to create a paradigm shift in how to approach design through different lenses, from the tactile to intergenerational. | |
| What Will Participants Do? | |
| Learn about the cultural, computational, and feminist significance of kolams—how they have functioned historically as intergenerational systems for teaching pattern recognition, logic, and spatial reasoning. | |
| Practice drawing kolams by hand, using traditional methods (chalk or rice flour) and paper, to experience firsthand their rhythm, flow, and generative logic. | |
| Contribute to a collaborative zine, co-created during the session. This zine will gather participants’ reflections, drawings, and responses. It may include: | |
| Short written pieces on relational design and ancestral/ intergenerational computation | |
| Visual documentation of their cross-cultural resonances with other systems (e.g., Andean quipu, weaving codes, embroidery charts) | |
| Speculative sketches and design prompts that center tactile making and domestic knowledge | |
| Reflect on how we might shift design practices by moving from the tactile to the technical, rather than the other way around.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Corporate Capture: Pathways to Public AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/257</link><guid isPermaLink="false">257</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 257 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Corporate Capture: Pathways to Public AI | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Alek Tarkowski; Maximilian Gahntz | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/257 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Corporate Capture: Pathways to Public AI | |
| Description: | |
| Public AI challenges the increasing corporate capture of AI technologies and concentration of AI power by offering a normative alternative that prioritizes the public interest over commercial incentives. It offers a vision of AI development and deployment that promotes public goods, public orientation, and public use. | |
| Public AI is a broad vision that can bring together various progressive perspectives on AI — those of AI model builders, activists fighting for more responsible AI, data governance experts, or stewards of various digital commons. We see conversations about public AI as opportunities to conduct much needed work on bridging the perspectives of AI developers (especially those working on open source AI) and other stakeholders in this space, to align technical perspectives and visions of the common good in a world increasingly permeated by AI. During the discussion, we want to see how much alignment there is on such a shared vision. What are the key conditions for building a public AI ecosystem, what are the means and what are the core governance principles? | |
| The session is part of ongoing outreach and network-building work as part of a movement that asks to counter corporate capture and instead advance public AI. Amidst often pessimistic debates around an AI industry captured by a handful of private companies, we hope to help people unlearn preconceived ideas of what a flourishing AI ecosystem looks like — and demonstrate what it could look like instead. | |
| In this talk, we will present [Mozilla’s](https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/research/library/public-ai/) and [Open Future’s](https://openfuture.eu/publication/white-paper-on-public-ai/) approaches to Public AI — and explore the question of what is needed to advance this vision. We will start by presenting key layers of the AI stack (compute, data, model and application) and give an overview of how power is concentrated at each layer. We will then talk about three pathways to public AI, each centered on one of the layers, and each providing a different solution to dealing with these bottlenecks. We will also present a gradient of publicness that helps better understand public AI, and explain the role of public, civic and commercial actors. And we will end by sketching out a vision of a public AI ecosystem that is powered by state-of-the-art open source models and other public resources.</description></item><item><title>Walking the Talk: Living Your Organization's Data Values</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/243</link><guid isPermaLink="false">243</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 243 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Walking the Talk: Living Your Organization's Data Values | |
| track: 89 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mary Helen Ybarra; Nneka Ekechukwu-Soyinka | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/243 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "89", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Walking the Talk: Living Your Organization's Data Values | |
| Description: | |
| Many organizations have developed data ethics statements and privacy policies, but struggle to translate these values into everyday practices. This session explores how Mozilla Foundation is unlearning the gap between policy and practice by embedding responsible data management into our organizational DNA. | |
| This forum will facilitate peer learning and collective problem-solving. We'll begin with a brief framing of common challenges in living organizational data values, then move into facilitated discussion groups where participants can share experiences, surface obstacles, and co-develop practical solutions. | |
| Through collaborative activities and discussion, participants will leverage collective wisdom to develop actionable approaches to bringing data values to life within their unique organizational contexts</description></item><item><title>AI and the Future of E-Commerce in an Agentic World</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2078</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2078</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2078 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI and the Future of E-Commerce in an Agentic World | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nelly Mensah; Andrew Schwartz; Kate Klonick; Nabiha Syed | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2078 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI and the Future of E-Commerce in an Agentic World | |
| Description: | |
| As AI agents become more deeply embedded in everyday life, they are transforming how customers discover, engage with, and remain loyal to brands. This panel explores how brands can balance human creativity with AI-driven insights to design more meaningful and personalized customer journeys. Speakers will look ahead to the future of brand storytelling in an increasingly automated world, unpacking both the opportunities for innovation and the ethical considerations of AI-powered commerce and content creation.</description></item><item><title>Alternative Platforms Booth: Blacksky Algorithms</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2133</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2133</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2133 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Alternative Platforms Booth: Blacksky Algorithms | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Rudy Fraser | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2133 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Alternative Platforms Booth: Blacksky Algorithms | |
| Description: | |
| [Blacksky](https://blackskyweb.xyz/) is building communal infrastructure for the intercommunal net—tools that make it simple for communities to host their own social networks, govern democratically, and pool resources without technical expertise</description></item><item><title>Igwebuike - Unity is Strength</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/114</link><guid isPermaLink="false">114</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 114 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Igwebuike - Unity is Strength | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nefertiti Emezue; Prof Gloria M.T Emezue; Ben Cashdan; Patricia Diaz; Carolina Botero; Alexander Garcia | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/114 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Igwebuike - Unity is Strength | |
| Description: | |
| Igwebuike – Unity is Strength | |
| Across the Global South, from Artificial Intelligence to the Creative Industries, many essential resources, talents, and contributions remain underrepresented or misrepresented. For young entrepreneurs, start-ups, and resources (like languages) in these regions, their experiences are often defined by structural inequality, cultural erasure, or exclusion from global recognition. As an old Igbo proverb says, “Agwo loo ibe ya, ya buo” (when the big snake swallows the smaller ones, it becomes bigger). This metaphor reflects how some established creative industries or dominant AI narratives absorb, or silence, smaller, emerging voices and under-represented resources. In many cases, the efforts of these marginalized innovators are hidden beneath the overwhelming weight of invisibility and institutional neglect. | |
| In response to these challenges, we propose Igwebuike, a space for radical re-imagination of these issues. The Igbo-African word Igwebuike, which translates to “Unity is Strength,” embodies a communal philosophy of togetherness, collaboration, and collective empowerment. Anchored in this spirit, the session brings together six speakers from different parts of the Global South - Africa and Latin America - who are each actively working to dismantle dominant narratives and offer new, inclusive frameworks for innovation. | |
| These speakers will share their lived experiences and the alternative strategies they have adopted to address these complexities within AI or the creative industries. Thus, from the transformative "data farming" approach to data curation in African AI, through cultural AI such as LatamGPT, to empowering African creators in the creative industry with Graphics Web Tracker, and game-changing platforms such as Re-Create, Access to Knowledge (A2K) and Data Uruguay, these practitioners will share how their various engagements challenge mainstream profit models and status-quo, by proffering local, community-driven solutions which transform systemic challenges into sustainable practices. | |
| The Global South is central to this discussion not only because of its history of marginalization and exploitation, but also because it is a wellspring of creativity, resilience, and innovation. This forum seeks to amplify voices from these regions and encourage the equitable redistribution of wealth—be it financial, intellectual, or cultural. | |
| Ultimately, the Igwebuike Forum is a call to action because it challenges participants and audiences alike to unlearn colonial logics, rethink inherited systems, and imagine bold, alternative futures. Through unity, collaboration, and storytelling, we believe a new ecosystem of inclusion, visibility, and empowerment can emerge—one that truly reflects the diverse realities of the Global South.</description></item><item><title>Elderly Fashion Show</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2138</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2138</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2138 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Elderly Fashion Show | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2138 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Elderly Fashion Show | |
| Description: | |
| Ai Fashion Show</description></item><item><title>Alternative Platforms Booth: Mozilla Data Collective</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2132</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2132</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2132 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Alternative Platforms Booth: Mozilla Data Collective | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Michelle Ulea-Vang; E.M. Lewis-Jong; Miguel Morachimo | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2132 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Alternative Platforms Booth: Mozilla Data Collective | |
| Description: | |
| Mozilla Data Collective is a platform in the truest sense. It’s yours to stand on, and make of it what you will. We have dual roots in two Mozilla projects - [Common Voice](https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/), a CC0 public dataset to help tech speak your language - and the [Data Futures Lab](https://www.mozillafoundation.org/data-futures-lab/) - an experimental space for instigating new approaches to data stewardship challenges. Mozilla Data Collective works by allowing you to share your data, retain ownership of it, and control who uses it. | |
| [Mozilla Data Collective](https://community.mozilladatacollective.com/) is backed and stewarded by Mozilla Foundation - the non-profit, movement-building, and philanthropy arm of Mozilla.</description></item><item><title>Post‑Quantum Browsing for Everyone</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/14</link><guid isPermaLink="false">14</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 14 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Post‑Quantum Browsing for Everyone | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nicola Tuveri; ANTONIO FUMERO; Ernestina Alvarez Corona | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/14 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Post‑Quantum Browsing for Everyone | |
| Description: | |
| As quantum computers move from theory to practice, the internet as we know it faces a silent but profound challenge. Our current cryptographic foundations are vulnerable to quantum attacks. Many governments and criminal organizations are believed to be conducting Harvest Now, Decrypt Later (HNDL) campaigns, intercepting and storing encrypted communications today, with the intent to decrypt them once cryptographically relevant quantum computers become available. This means that sensitive data exchanged today is already at risk, despite our current cryptographic protections. | |
| Web browsers are gateways to the internet, responsible for securing billions of daily interactions—from email to banking, from government services to private chats. The transition to quantum-resistant cryptography begins here. | |
| We will be sharing our experience from QUBIP project, an EU-funded initiative under HE Program. QUBIP focuses on digital systems addressing the 5 main building blocks that use public-key cryptography for security purposes: hardware, cryptographic libraries, operating system, communication protocols and applications. QUBIP addresses all 5 blocks coherently solving all dependency issues that may arise within each block and between blocks with the ultimate goal of validating at TRL 6 three systems that use these blocks in IoT-based Digital Manufacturing, Internet Browsing, and Software Networks Environments for Telcos use cases. The return on experience from the three practical exercises of transition to PQC will then be maximised through the development of a migration playbook. | |
| The responsible for the Internet Browsing pilot (Nicola Tuveri) will join the conversation for sharing the outcomes from the building blocks integration at a system level, and the user-centric experiments to be taken by the end of 2025 in order to develop such a migration playbook. The experiments consists of the transition of Firefox browser toward a quantum-resistant state through adoption of PQ/T Hybrid TLS 1.3 for key-exchange and authentication, and PQ zero-knowledge Verifiable Credentials (PQ zero-knowledge VCs) for authentication and authorization. | |
| Our goal in QUBIP is not only to ensure that the browser remains secure in a quantum future, but to explore how these changes are experienced by users. Do they notice differences in performance? Do they feel more secure? Do they even understand what's changing? Participants will leave with a step‑by‑step guide to test our browser add‑on, contribute telemetry to QUBIP, and advocate for post‑quantum transition in their organisations.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Roundtable 2</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/209</link><guid isPermaLink="false">209</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 209 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Roundtable 2 | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Saayeli Bruni | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/209 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Roundtable 2 | |
| Description: | |
| Join a selection of Mozilla Ventures portfolio companies who will be showcasing their work.</description></item><item><title>The role of the Internet in building climate-resilient communities</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/101</link><guid isPermaLink="false">101</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 101 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The role of the Internet in building climate-resilient communities | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Sadik Shahadu; Shadrach Ankrah | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/101 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The role of the Internet in building climate-resilient communities | |
| Description: | |
| This session will examine the important role of the Internet in fostering climate-resilient communities, particularly in areas that are extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including disasters. While it is often understood as immaterial (being in the cloud, etc.), the Internet relies on vulnerable infrastructure that can be disrupted by the impacts of crises, such as climate change, leaving communities disconnected when they need the Internet the most. In this session, we'll explore how robust digital infrastructure and emergency telecommunications are both convenient and crucial for human safety, disaster response, and long-term adaptation. | |
| The session will examine how climate change worsens disasters, making reliable communication more critical than ever. We'll highlight the destructive effects of communication blackouts, which disrupt early warnings, impede humanitarian aid, and interrupt access to vital information and support networks. By employing lessons from real-world crises, we'll show how Hastily Formed Networks (HFNs) and community-led connectivity initiatives leverage various technologies - from satellite connectivity to local Wi-Fi solutions powered by sustainable energy - to restore communications quickly. These efforts bridge critical gaps, providing essential information for responders and enabling affected communities to connect with family and friends and access aid. | |
| Beyond immediate crisis response, the session will broaden its focus to the Internet's role in proactive climate action and community resilience building. We'll discuss how reliable connectivity facilitates climate monitoring, enables data-driven preparedness strategies, and supports sustainable development in vulnerable areas. This includes access to online education for continuous learning during disruptions, remote work capabilities for economic stability, and digital tools for community organizing and resource sharing. | |
| The session aims to foster a discussion on the policy frameworks, sustainable funding models, and multi-stakeholder collaborations necessary for deploying and maintaining resilient Internet infrastructure in underserved communities. We'll explore how governments, civil society, the technical community, and the private sector can work together to ensure that the Internet truly serves as a foundation for strong, adaptive communities capable of facing future climate challenges.</description></item><item><title>The Needle of Change</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/194</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 194 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The Needle of Change | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Daniel Odongo | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/194 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The Needle of Change | |
| Description: | |
| At the heart of the installation stands a needle, symbolizing the catalyst for change in entrepreneurship. | |
| Individuals contribute ideas on how entrepreneurship can prioritize people over profit and foster local empowerment. Each idea is represented using a different color of thread and linked to the needle, creating a collaborative and living tapestry of contributions gathered over three days. | |
| This installation highlights the collective power of small actions and the role each participant plays in shaping a more equitable economic future. The Needle of Change serves as a reminder that transformative shifts in entrepreneurship begin with individual contributions, and together, these contributions can lead to lasting impact.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Transformer Lab</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/217</link><guid isPermaLink="false">217</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 217 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Transformer Lab | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ali Asaria | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/217 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Transformer Lab | |
| Description: | |
| The Open Source Platform for Training Advanced AI Models | |
| With Transformer Lab, researchers, ML engineers, and developers can collaborate to build, study, and evaluate AI models—with provenance, reproducibility, evals, and transparency included.</description></item><item><title>Imagining a Better Digital Future: Mozilla Education Global Efforts</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/238</link><guid isPermaLink="false">238</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 238 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Imagining a Better Digital Future: Mozilla Education Global Efforts | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jaselle Gill; Steven Azeka | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/238 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Imagining a Better Digital Future: Mozilla Education Global Efforts | |
| Description: | |
| In this session, we’ll explore the work Mozilla Education is doing to imagine and shape a better digital future. Our efforts focus on three main areas: | |
| 1) Supporting college and university faculty in integrating ethical and responsible principles into computing and humanities curricula; | |
| 2) Showcasing and amplifying this and other Mozilla expertise through our Education Hub; and | |
| 3) Offering guidance and thought leadership on implementing responsible computing practices across the field. | |
| We’ll discuss each of these areas in detail, share examples of our approach, and offer a look ahead at the future direction of Mozilla Education’s work. Additionally, we’ll lay out opportunities for attendees to contribute to our larger efforts.</description></item><item><title>AI for the People: A Global Dialogues Challenge</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2080</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2080</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2080 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI for the People: A Global Dialogues Challenge | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Divya Siddarth; Faisal Lalani; Joal Stein | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2080 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI for the People: A Global Dialogues Challenge | |
| Description: | |
| In this interactive workshop, the Collective Intelligence Project (CIP) flips the script: participants become the decision makers, navigating the tensions and dilemmas of how AI should evolve. Participants will work with real insights from CIP’s Global Dialogues, with input from thousands of people from over seventy countries on what they want to see from the future of AI, to interpret data, debate trade-offs, and crowdsource the next “big question” that will shape the 2026 Global Dialogue cycle. The workshop invites attendees to concretely map out how we can go beyond talking about 'democratizing AI', and build global public input into the full AI stack.</description></item><item><title>A World of New Learnings with Chelsea Manning</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2084</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2084</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2084 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: A World of New Learnings with Chelsea Manning | |
| track: 11 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Chelsea Manning | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2084 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "11", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: A World of New Learnings with Chelsea Manning | |
| Description: | |
| In a world saturated with data, algorithms, and stories told by those in power, what does it take to truly unlearn the narratives that shape us? Chelsea Manning has lived at the fault lines of secrecy and truth, obedience and conscience, isolation and community. In this powerful keynote, she shares how her journey—from classified military intelligence to public whistleblowing to life as a network security advocate—has been defined not by what she learned, but by what she had the courage to unlearn. | |
| Through personal stories and hard-won insights, Chelsea explores how dismantling the myths we inherit—about safety, control, identity, and technology—can open space for new, more liberating forms of knowledge. She challenges us to reimagine the internet as a place that serves people rather than power, where openness is a practice, not a slogan, and where creativity thrives alongside accountability. | |
| A World of New Learnings is both a cautionary tale and a call to action: an invitation to let go of the certainties that no longer serve us, to see clearly the systems we participate in, and to consciously build futures rooted in empathy, transparency, and collective care.</description></item><item><title>Creating an Actionable System to Unlearn and Replace Capitalism - how to implement inclusion, equality and diversity</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/134</link><guid isPermaLink="false">134</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 134 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Creating an Actionable System to Unlearn and Replace Capitalism - how to implement inclusion, equality and diversity | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Gordon F B Johnson | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/134 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Creating an Actionable System to Unlearn and Replace Capitalism - how to implement inclusion, equality and diversity | |
| Description: | |
| <b>This session will lay out an actionable plan to achieve a post-capitalist economic interaction system by which we all thrive, with more effective ways to participate economically so we all achieve more leisure/comfort, and less inequality/stress.</b> | |
| Humanity has at its command enough technology and resources that we could all live really well, not just marginally survive. All of us. | |
| Ending starvation, poverty, homelessness, providing healthcare - all worthwhile, but far short of what we can achieve by truly, universally, and effectively aligning our work, knowledge and resources. | |
| Capitalists have cowed us with dogma, fear and greed, steeped in an environment where we are induced to believe everything is zero-sum, dog-eat-dog competition, and "they" decide what to provide with only lip service to what we want - jobs, goods and services, housing, food, interest rates. (And by the power of the wealth they take from all the rest of us, they control the making of laws, regulations and policies, such that what ought to be illegal and not done, is allowed to be standard practice.) | |
| Some see through the facade and rage at all capitalism's evils. Hardly anyone follows through with suggestions to replace it. (1984, anyone?) | |
| We'll look at a model that turns all the norms on their head to achieve a way to interact by which we can prioritize the environment and ALL people, so we all win. | |
| • <b>Harnessing energy should free us from work</b> – <i>not put us out of their jobs so we have to fight each other while groveling for their next job.</i> | |
| • <b>Mass production and tech should make things more available and cheaper, and at the same time more customized</b> – <i>not shortages of what we want that jack prices or overages that get wastefully thrown out.</i> | |
| • <b>Communication should facilitate producing nearly exactly the right amount of everything</b> – <i>not be victims of business risk of the business cycle (the boom-and-bust that execs and owners point at in rationalizing their obscene inequality).</i> | |
| • <b>Exceptional ideas should percolate to the top and get made, making everyone's life better</b> – <i>not unsupported and ignored, and not scooped up by one of the few megalithic corporations either to milk for highest profit or to shelve so they don't have to out-compete the new ideas.</i></description></item><item><title>Wired for Belonging: Reclaiming Electronics as Cultural Infrastructure</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/63</link><guid isPermaLink="false">63</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 63 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Wired for Belonging: Reclaiming Electronics as Cultural Infrastructure | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Karina Nemeth; hans stam | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/63 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Wired for Belonging: Reclaiming Electronics as Cultural Infrastructure | |
| Description: | |
| How did we come to accept that electronics must be opaque, disposable, and distant? This session invites participants to unlearn the myth of immaterial tech by reimagining electronics as something deeply local, cultural, and human. | |
| 🔹 **Part 1: The Reign of Silicon** | |
| We begin with a sharp historical framing: how **Silicon Valley and Shenzhen rose in parallel**, driven not only by innovation but by access to raw resources, cheap engineering labor, and government-backed trade policies. | |
| The result: **homogenized design standards**, **disappearing public process knowledge**, and **devices disconnected from people and place**. | |
| Then, we shift to imagining a new model. | |
| 🔹 **Part 2: City Planning for Local Electronics** | |
| Participants become city planners envisioning **local electronics ecosystems**. | |
| In small, role-based groups—engineers, artisans, technicians, teachers, politicians—they’ll map: | |
| - What’s made in their region, and why | |
| - Who participates, from workers to public institutions | |
| - How knowledge, pride, and repair flow through the system | |
| 🔹 **Part 3: The Golden Ticket** | |
| Each participant receives a **Golden Ticket**—a letter-writing prompt. | |
| They’ll write to a future child about a **locally made product** they helped create: | |
| - What is it, and why does it matter? | |
| - Who made it, and how is it cared for? | |
| - What legacy does it carry? | |
| They exchange tickets with another participant, and select letters will be read aloud to melt participants' hearts. | |
| 🔹 **Part 4: Wall of Futures + Invitation to Build** | |
| We close with a **ceremonial gathering** of all visions. | |
| Participants post their city plans and letters onto a shared **Wall of Futures**, then explore interactive stations: | |
| - 🧱 **LEGO Station** – Model local factories or community centers | |
| - 🗺️ **Map Table** – Plot future electronics hubs around the world | |
| **As a continuation of this session, we invite participants to join our offsite evening Meetup—an open gathering to bring (or discover) a piece of childhood electronics and share the story of how it shaped your imagination.** | |
| This Forum centers **imagination**, **macroeconomic reframing**, and **tangible pride of place**. | |
| No engineering background needed—only a belief that technology can serve culture, not erase it.</description></item><item><title>Algorithmic Perfumery</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2110</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2110</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2110 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Algorithmic Perfumery | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Frederik Duerinck | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2110 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Algorithmic Perfumery | |
| Description: | |
| Algorithmic Perfumery by EveryHuman is the world’s first public artificial intelligence (A.I.) scent design experience at the crossroad of art, science and technology that creates unique scents based | |
| on your personality and preferences.</description></item><item><title>Sex Worker Tech Innovations to End Violence</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/146</link><guid isPermaLink="false">146</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 146 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Sex Worker Tech Innovations to End Violence | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Yigit Aydinalp; Lynsey Walton | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/146 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Sex Worker Tech Innovations to End Violence | |
| Description: | |
| Because of repressive policies, criminalization, and stigmatization, sex workers are overexposed to violence and other forms of harm, including online violence. However, when sex workers try to report violence or seek help, they often experience victim-blaming, inadequate responses and discrimination. National laws to regulate the digital space often further marginalize sex workers. This leaves them without protection except the safety they can foster with each other. | |
| Sex workers are both early adopters and innovators in technology. Many sex workers use digital tools to create their professional personas, manage their businesses, and screen clients for red flags, increasing their ability to work independently of third parties. In response to violence and the failure of state systems to support them, sex workers around the world have created their own digital safety programs and digital reporting systems to alert other sex workers to predators, prevent violence, and gain access to healing and justice. They also use these systems to gather data to improve the health, safety and wellbeing of sex workers. | |
| In this session, sex worker-led initiatives to design and run violence reporting and prevention systems will come together to share insights and expertise. What are the design principles behind these systems and how can we resource, scale and sustain them? How are state systems and laws around tech safety creating obstacles to sex worker safety and the accessibility and sustainability of these systems? What do larger movements to end gender-based violence and online harassment have to learn from sex workers?</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Digital Safety Exhibition Using QR CODES</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/198</link><guid isPermaLink="false">198</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 198 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Digital Safety Exhibition Using QR CODES | |
| track: 25 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Brenda Zulu; Buumba Nyirenda | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/198 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "25", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Digital Safety Exhibition Using QR CODES | |
| Description: | |
| Proposal: Unlearning Digital Safety: An Interactive Exhibition Bridging Art and Technology | |
| 1. Introduction | |
| In an era where digital threats disproportionately impact women and girls, this exhibition reimagines digital safety education through an innovative fusion of African cultural heritage (wooden masks) and technology (QR codes). Designed by the Digital Safety Trainer Brenda Zulu after training women and girls from universities on digital safety training, the exhibition invites conference attendees and virtual visitors to "unlearn" misconceptions about online security while celebrating African identity. The project empowers participants to share personal stories, highlight systemic vulnerabilities, and foster dialogue on safeguarding women in digital spaces. | |
| 2. Exhibition Concept | |
| Theme: Masks Unveil Stories: Protecting Identities in a Digital World | |
| Physical Exhibition: 40 QR codes displayed alongside 10 African wooden masks at a conference booth. Each QR code links to bite-sized, multimedia content (videos, infographics, podcasts) on digital safety. | |
| Virtual Exhibition: A 3D-rendered gallery replicating the physical space online, allowing global access to resources and stories. | |
| Cultural Hook: Masks symbolize the duality of concealment and revelation—parallel to how digital identities are both protected and exposed online. | |
| 3. Key Components | |
| A. Physical Exhibition | |
| 1. QR Code Stations | |
| (40 codes total): | |
| 2. African Wooden Masks (10): | |
| Each mask represents a theme (e.g., “Privacy,” “Consent,” “Resilience” etc ). | |
| Accompanying plaques explain the mask’s cultural significance and link to a QR code with related content. | |
| B. Virtual Exhibition | |
| Gallery: Participants navigate a digital twin of the physical exhibition, clicking masks/QR codes to access content. | |
| Online Forum: A space for global audiences to share their own stories and solutions. | |
| 4. Stories & Themes from University Students | |
| Personal Narratives to Include: | |
| Recognising Online Harassment and Hate Speech | |
| “Confronting Revenge Porn: A Survivor’s Journey” | |
| Sex for grades at University | |
| “My Fight Against Gender-Based Cyberbullying” | |
| Expected Outcomes | |
| Awareness, Empowerment, Advocacy and | |
| Sustainability of the Online hub which will remain active with periodic updates. | |
| 5. Sustainability | |
| Crowdsource new stories/content annually to keep the platform dynamic. | |
| 6. Conclusion | |
| This exhibition disrupts traditional digital safety education by centering African women’s voices and leveraging art as a bridge to technology. It transforms passive learning into an immersive, human-centered experience—both online and offline—to inspire lasting behavioral change. | |
| I am proposing that we invite three University students from different Universities to be part of this exhibition.</description></item><item><title>OFFSITE MozFest Web Hackathon!</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/272</link><guid isPermaLink="false">272</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 272 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: OFFSITE MozFest Web Hackathon! | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Karen Kim | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/272 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: OFFSITE MozFest Web Hackathon! | |
| Description: | |
| Details TBD, Firefox staff to craft a “challenge”</description></item><item><title>Who Holds Control? Unlearning Power from Digital Margins</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/13</link><guid isPermaLink="false">13</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 13 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Who Holds Control? Unlearning Power from Digital Margins | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Kate Tejada; Sumiko Puse; Safiro Ortiz | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/13 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Who Holds Control? Unlearning Power from Digital Margins | |
| Description: | |
| This session critically interrogates the power dynamics embedded in the development and governance of digital technologies, drawing on Latin American cyberfeminist praxis to propose alternative imaginaries. Facilitated by the collective Ser Valiente en Red, it engages participants in a process of collective inquiry and co-creation, centering care, justice, and epistemic diversity. | |
| The session begins by challenging the myth of digital neutrality through a reflective prompt that connects personal experience with structural critique. Participants are invited to consider where power is visible—and invisible—on the internet, laying the groundwork for a shared critical vocabulary. | |
| A narrative centered on teenage girls in Cusco, whose digital content is erased while misogynistic discourse proliferates, serves as an entry point to explore the non-neutrality of platforms. This example illustrates how algorithmic governance can amplify or silence voices, disproportionately affecting users based on gender, geography, and age. It frames digital surveillance and exclusion as systemic rather than incidental. | |
| A participatory mapping exercise follows, wherein participants identify actors with varying degrees of influence over technological governance: dominant forces such as transnational corporations, international institutions, and Global North governments; those with constrained power, including NGOs, activists, and alternative media; and those systematically excluded, such as girls, Indigenous communities, and individuals with precarious internet access. This collective exercise seeks to visualize global asymmetries and reframe governance as a process that must integrate diverse and historically marginalized knowledges. | |
| The session then presents three case studies that challenge dominant paradigms from the margins: Indigenous community networks that autonomously establish digital connectivity, digital self-defense initiatives led by Peruvian adolescents, and privacy tools built on the principle of situated consent. These examples not only critique existing systems but offer concrete, community-driven alternatives to prevailing models of digital governance. | |
| The final segment invites participants to collectively reimagine the “rules of the internet” through small-group deliberation. Questions of what to regulate, who decides, and how to embed collective care and dissent guide the exercise. Participants share proposals that reflect a plurality of visions for more equitable digital futures. | |
| The session closes with a provocation: “The rules that govern us are not immutable” and “Imagination is a political act.” Rather than offering fixed solutions, the session provides tools, language, and connections that inspire ongoing engagement in building digital worlds rooted in justice, plurality, and solidarity.</description></item><item><title>Decentralizing AI Governance: A Community-Driven Alternative to Global Regulatory Fragmentation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/51</link><guid isPermaLink="false">51</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 51 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Decentralizing AI Governance: A Community-Driven Alternative to Global Regulatory Fragmentation | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Kartikeya Srivastava; Cathy Zhang | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/51 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Decentralizing AI Governance: A Community-Driven Alternative to Global Regulatory Fragmentation | |
| Description: | |
| In today’s rapidly evolving AI landscape, governance is increasingly shaped by geopolitical | |
| rivalries and institutional power plays. The world's major powers are developing divergent regulatory frameworks, leading to a fragmented global landscape of AI governance. This talk examines this fragmentation in AI governance, analyzes its implications, and proposes community-driven alternatives that prioritize democratic participation and public interest. | |
| The three dominant AI governance models reflect distinctly different priorities and approaches. The United States has adopted a market-led approach with light-touch regulation that emphasizes competitiveness and voluntary industry commitments. The European Union promotes a rights-based, precautionary approach grounded in democratic values. China's state-directed model balances national priorities with stability while aligning with socialist values. | |
| This talk will provide a comparative analysis of US, Chinese, and European AI governance | |
| regimes, drawing on leading academic and policy literature to examine their philosophical | |
| underpinnings, structural characteristics, and geopolitical implications. We will then critique these dominant models through the lens of power asymmetries, regulatory capture, and technocratic bias, highlighting how affected communities are routinely excluded from governance processes. | |
| In response, we will advocate for a decentralized, community-driven model of AI governance drawing on existing proposals. Several promising alternatives demonstrate how more participatory governance frameworks might function. Barcelona's Municipal AI Strategy exemplifies city-level governance that emphasizes technological sovereignty and meaningful citizen oversight of algorithmic systems. Harvard Law School's research on Co-Governance frameworks illustrates how regulatory authority can be effectively shared among government, industry, civil society, and affected communities. Recent academic work, including "Beyond Participatory AI" (AAAI/ACM) and "Global AI governance" (Oxford Academic), provides concrete mechanisms for substantive community involvement throughout the AI lifecycle and offers insights into scaling these approaches internationally while respecting contextual differences. | |
| This session aims to move beyond a binary view of AI governance as either state- or market- led. Instead, it will explore what a truly inclusive, globally responsive governance framework might look like - one where community voices shape the design, deployment, and regulation of AI systems. Ultimately, decentralizing AI governance is not just a policy choice - it’s a democratic imperative. This talk invites us to reimagine AI governance not as something done to communities, but with them - creating systems that distribute both the benefits and control of this transformative technology more equitably.</description></item><item><title>Using Investigative Methods to Uncover AI - the Case of Healthcare</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/116</link><guid isPermaLink="false">116</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 116 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Using Investigative Methods to Uncover AI - the Case of Healthcare | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Julia Keseru; Eva Simon; María Álvarez del Vayo | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/116 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Using Investigative Methods to Uncover AI - the Case of Healthcare | |
| Description: | |
| AI is rapidly transforming healthcare, propelled by advances in data integration and growing interoperability. However, key risks like data breaches, inadequate consent, algorithmic bias, generative AI “hallucinations,” and the lack of transparency around data sourcing and decision-making threaten patient safety, equity and trust in clinical AI systems. | |
| Our interactive session aims to co-create new pathways for the governance of AI in healthcare, by exploring how we can combine powerful legal and investigative methods to uncover hidden practices and power dynamics within the industry. In this 60-minute session, Julia Keseru (independent researcher), Eva Simon (Head of Tech & Rights at the Civil Liberties Union for Europe), and María Álvarez del Vayo (data journalist at Civio) will provide an in-depth exploration of how we can achieve greater accountability for health AI tools, using creative methods to monitor and influence these systems through a combination of legal and investigative techniques. The session aims to provide attendees with actionable knowledge on applying existing legal and investigative tools more creatively and effectively, ultimately contributing to a more accountable and rights-respecting AI ecosystem. Depending on the context, these may include tools such as Freedom of Information requests, data protection mechanisms like the EU’s Data Subject Access Requests, or publicly available information on the financial flows of health AI companies. | |
| Building on Julia’s DataBody Futures project as a Mozilla Senior Tech Policy Fellow, Eva’s expertise in digital rights and technology policy, and María's work uncovering public interest AI systems, this session will examine current challenges and propose practical approaches to improving transparency and accountability within the AI industry, highlighting critical safeguards to be developed and enforced especially in contexts where the tech industry is unwilling to voluntarily disclose any useful information.</description></item><item><title>Mind</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/183</link><guid isPermaLink="false">183</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 183 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Mind | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jessica J. | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/183 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Mind | |
| Description: | |
| a mind created from an open source library, connected to a real-time data set (tbd), changes based on interaction in-person and behind the screen</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Sendmarc</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/221</link><guid isPermaLink="false">221</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 221 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Sendmarc | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Richard Rose; Keith Thompson | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/221 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Sendmarc | |
| Description: | |
| How Sendmarc is creating a safer Internet for all. At the heart of everything we do, is our purpose of making the Internet a safer place for all. We provide the world’s best DMARC solution by combining leading software, tools, and implementation, as well as a hands-on training and enablement process.</description></item><item><title>IP's Incentive Structure, Rexamined</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/83</link><guid isPermaLink="false">83</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 83 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: IP's Incentive Structure, Rexamined | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Hannah Ismael; Miquel Peguera | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/83 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: IP's Incentive Structure, Rexamined | |
| Description: | |
| As legislators move to meet the AI question in IP, there is frequent discussion of whether the correct “balance” is struck. There is a desire to allow the new industry a chance to develop while simultaneously preserving the capability of artists and creators to make a living and retain some control, upstream and downstream, over their works. The following conversation seeks to map where various EU and UK policy directives have fallen in “striking this balance.” For example, how does the structure of the various TDM directives/proposals speak to creator, research, and innovation priorities? Where does implementing “teeth” make sense, if at all (mechanism to ensure DSM art 17 is followed, market entry req. for TDM?, etc.)? What role can a central repository play, and what enforcement “teeth” make this practical? And finally, what does the creative industry’s reaction around each proposal tell us about is “tolerable” absent further policy or government support? | |
| Hannah Ismael (Mozilla Foundation) will moderate with Professor Martin Kretschmer and Professor Miquel Peguera joining as speakers. Professor Kretschmer (University of Glasgow) has written extensively on structuring TDM exceptions, the risks of opt-out regimes, and the economics of machine-learning lifecycles. Professor Peguera (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya) brings deep expertise in intermediary liability and platform regulation, examining how evolving safe-harbor and hyperlinking doctrines shape the responsibilities of online platforms and the enforcement boundaries of IP law.</description></item><item><title>Mozilla Education Hub</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/253</link><guid isPermaLink="false">253</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 253 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Mozilla Education Hub | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jaselle Gill; Joycelyn Streator | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/253 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Mozilla Education Hub | |
| Description: | |
| A demo of the forthcoming Mozilla Education Hub - show casing course features, overview of selected course content and hearing more about the Open Source learning platform.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Webacy</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/202</link><guid isPermaLink="false">202</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 202 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Webacy | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jeremiah Oconnor | |
| start_at: | |
| end_at: | |
| timezone: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/202 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Webacy | |
| Description: | |
| Digital Assets, unlocked. Blockchain holds the promise of a better way of living. Direct digital ownership and autonomy, offering greater control and freedom. But to be free, you need to feel safe.That's why Webacy was created.</description></item><item><title>Hype dynamics as tech governance</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/31</link><guid isPermaLink="false">31</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 31 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Hype dynamics as tech governance | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Pierre Depaz; Andreu Belsunces Gonçalves | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/31 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Hype dynamics as tech governance | |
| Description: | |
| Hype is a future-oriented, overpromissory sociotechnical phenomenon that plays a central role in the governance of emerging technologies. It consists of hyperbolic discourses designed to inspire confidence and persuade stakeholders of the desirability, inevitability, and urgency of technological innovation. Hype is not merely communicative excess; it is a constitutive force in techno-financial capitalism, functioning as a manufactured event that captures attention, compresses decision-making timeframes, and fuels speculative investment. | |
| A hallmark of hype is the creation of perceived windows of opportunity that appear to be rapidly closing, generating fear of missing out and accelerating commitment before critical evaluation is possible. These dynamics contribute to what has been described as the accelerated chronopolitics of innovation, where short-term speculation dominates and longer-term considerations are sidelined. | |
| While often short-lived and susceptible to disillusionment, hype follows a recognisable trajectory of rising expectations, peak visibility, and subsequent decline. Nonetheless, even failed or deflated hype cycles can leave lasting institutional and infrastructural traces. As such, hype is not peripheral to technological development; it is an intrinsic force in technological emergence. It functions by instrumentalising uncertainty, projecting imagined futures as inevitable outcomes, and orchestrating collective visions through promotional discourse. | |
| Crucially, hype is performative: it not only reflects but shapes reality. By amplifying potential benefits and downplaying limitations, it legitimises ventures, coordinates actors, and structures expectations across diverse sociotechnical fields. It is a shared orientation that binds together entrepreneurs, researchers, investors, policymakers, consultants, journalists, and influencers. | |
| Often driven by charismatic figures and supported by sensationalist media, hype generates affective intensities—excitement, desire, and hope at its peak, followed by fear, frustration, and disillusionment when promises are unmet. These emotional cycles are not collateral effects but integral to how hype operates as a mode of technopolitical governance. It mobilises resources, legitimises agendas, and produces a sense of inevitability around particular technological trajectories, ultimately shaping what futures are imagined, funded, and pursued. | |
| Taking this into consideration, this interactive session aims at debating about the role and manifestations of hype in technology governance – the interests, attention dynamics, financial flows, infrastructural consequences, power inertias and forms of influence and exclusion that it entails. We welcome actors working in the tech industry, activists, policy makers, artists, hackers and scholars to share their experiences and case studies to understand this urgent, overlooked topic in a historical moment where political, technological and financial power are inherently linked to hype dynamics.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Evaluating Harms: Data Donations</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2097</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2097</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2097 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Evaluating Harms: Data Donations | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Brandi Geurkink; Jessica Dai | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2097 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Evaluating Harms: Data Donations | |
| Description: | |
| How do we move beyond traditional models of data collection to approaches that truly serve communities? This interactive session will be a community brainstorm on the “next era” of data collection: centered on data donations and aggregated individual reporting. Participants will explore how data donations might shift power, what risks and harms we must unlearn from past practices, and what ethical, participatory models could look like going forward. | |
| This conversation will open space for imagining responsible, community-driven alternatives, where data is not just extracted but offered with agency, trust, and accountability.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Mars</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/176</link><guid isPermaLink="false">176</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 176 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Mars | |
| track: | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Justin | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/176 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "Unknown Track", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Mars | |
| Description: | |
| # Let's Get Creative | |
| ## About | |
| Join us for a participatory design installation where you’ll draw Common Voice’s mascot, Mars. People of all skill levels and backgrounds are encouraged to participate. | |
| ## Purpose | |
| Unlearn the creation of Mars, a robot that speaks your language, to rebuild a future where communities are at the heart of technology creation and future robotics.</description></item><item><title>Rebuilding Lives, Restoring Trust: A Path to Second Chances</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/44</link><guid isPermaLink="false">44</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 44 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Rebuilding Lives, Restoring Trust: A Path to Second Chances | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Marissa Ranalli Zapata; Alexander Billy; Tyler Richardett | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/44 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Rebuilding Lives, Restoring Trust: A Path to Second Chances | |
| Description: | |
| More than 70 million Americans—1 in 3 adults—have a criminal record or experience with the legal system. Even after serving their sentences, these individuals face lifelong barriers to employment, housing, financial stability, and civic engagement, locking them out of full participation in society. The effects extend far beyond the individual: families, communities, and entire economies bear the consequences of these systemic barriers. | |
| Free Our Vote, a US-based tech nonprofit, aims to restore dignity to people with past felony convictions by building advanced AI-powered and machine-learning techniques to traverse fragmented criminal court systems to determine voter, expungement, and benefit eligibility. In doing so, we can address inequities caused by these broken data systems, generations of misinformation, and complex, often discriminatory state laws. | |
| This session will dive into how technologists and innovators in the room can disrupt harmful data systems within their own industry to reimagine and design a new, equitable, and human-centered solution.</description></item><item><title>Fireside Chat on Openness and Philanthropy + Mozilla Grantee Showcase</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/247</link><guid isPermaLink="false">247</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 247 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Fireside Chat on Openness and Philanthropy + Mozilla Grantee Showcase | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mehan Jayasuriya; Alix Dunn; Ellie Bertani; Nabiha Syed | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/247 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Fireside Chat on Openness and Philanthropy + Mozilla Grantee Showcase | |
| Description: | |
| 2025 Mozilla grantees working on topics like environmental justice, data stewardship and trustworthy AI will compete live to pitch their projects to a live audience. Attendees will vote to choose which project is the most impactful; the winning project will walk away with a prize.</description></item><item><title>The Care Commons: Wall and River of Possibilities</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2083</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2083</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2083 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The Care Commons: Wall and River of Possibilities | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Josh Nesbit | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2083 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The Care Commons: Wall and River of Possibilities | |
| Description: | |
| Step into a living experiment in care and connection. Add your needs, offers, and dreams to the expansive festival wall, then watch them flow into the River of Possibilities – a real-time digital display just beside it. Our steward team will help carry shares from wall to river and spark thoughtful connections. Whether it’s a quick exchange or a long-term collaboration, everything you share becomes part of our shared current. What will you float?</description></item><item><title>AMA with Mozilla Leadership</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/255</link><guid isPermaLink="false">255</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 255 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AMA with Mozilla Leadership | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mark Surman; Nabiha Syed; Alix Dunn | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/255 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AMA with Mozilla Leadership | |
| Description: | |
| Join Mozilla Foundation’s Executive Director Nabiha Syed and Mozilla’s President Mark Surman for an open conversation about where Mozilla is headed next. In this live “Ask Me Anything” session, they’ll share Mozilla’s vision to ensure agency and choice in the era of AI, and evolution from a movement that helped build the open web to a portofolio tackling today’s biggest challenges in AI, public interest technology, and internet health.</description></item><item><title>Deep Hype in Artificial General Intelligence: Uncertainty, Sociotechnical Fictions and the Governance of AI Futures</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/159</link><guid isPermaLink="false">159</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 159 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Deep Hype in Artificial General Intelligence: Uncertainty, Sociotechnical Fictions and the Governance of AI Futures | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Andreu Belsunces Gonçalves | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/159 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Deep Hype in Artificial General Intelligence: Uncertainty, Sociotechnical Fictions and the Governance of AI Futures | |
| Description: | |
| Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has emerged as the most ambitious frontier of the artificial intelligence industry, despite its conceptual ambiguity and the lack of consensus regarding its technical feasibility. This presentation introduces the concept of AGI deep hype: a form of long-term technological overpromising rooted in structural uncertainty and projections of civilisational transformation. Unlike conventional hype cycles, which revolve around short-term breakthroughs, deep hype sustains momentum by projecting unverifiable promises far into the future. | |
| Building on the notion of sociotechnical fictions (mediated forms of imagination within technoscientific domains that help materialise non-existent technological assemblages) this presentation argues that AGI is a product of venture capital’s speculative imagination. This mode of imagination is future-oriented and market-driven: it anticipates returns, shapes emerging industries, and legitimises its interventions through the myth of technological inevitability. It functions as both a financial strategy and a moral narrative that frames private capital as the rightful guide to humanity’s future. | |
| In its most powerful expressions, particularly among leading U.S. venture capitalists, this speculative drive is embedded in a broader ideological project shaped by cyberlibertarian and longtermist worldviews. These narratives position AGI development not just as an economic opportunity but as a moral imperative to safeguard humanity from existential risk. | |
| Drawing from analysis of key academic, media, and policy discourses, the presentation identifies a series of interlinked arenas of uncertainty underpinning AGI deep hype, including conceptual, temporal, economic, geopolitical and moral, among others. By mapping these uncertainties, this presentation explains how AGI deep hype relies on sociotechnical fictions with significant performative agency, shaping both expectations and infrastructure, and ultimately redefining the contours of AI governance and technological possibility.</description></item><item><title>Let's help the big fishes to unlearn wrongdoing: succeful strategic litigations</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/166</link><guid isPermaLink="false">166</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 166 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Let's help the big fishes to unlearn wrongdoing: succeful strategic litigations | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Simona Levi | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/166 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Let's help the big fishes to unlearn wrongdoing: succeful strategic litigations | |
| Description: | |
| 1): Opensource jailing bankers device. Our civic action using legal, technological, and investigative tools led to the conviction of 65 bankers and politicians—including Spain’s former Minister of Economy and President of the International Monetary Fund—15 of whom went to prison. This campaign also forced the payback of 9billions to the people [https://caso-bankia.com/english/] [https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/simona-levi/] | |
| 2): a strategic action that forced (and fined) the Spanish Trade Chamber to stop illegally exposing the personal data of millions of self-employed workers in Spain. [https://xnet-x.net/en/xnet-wins-protect-data-self-employed-workers/] | |
| Other institutional wrongdoing in Spain related with privacy, so to share with the audicence what happen in their countries and how we could act together.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Probabl</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/220</link><guid isPermaLink="false">220</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 220 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Probabl | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Xavier Herman; François Goupil | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/220 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Probabl | |
| Description: | |
| Open Source Commons for AI, Machine Learning, and Data Science. | |
| We believe that data science and machine learning are enablers of our modern society. Data rich processes are better informed, more efficient and ultimately lead to better decisions. This is increasingly true as we face new challenges in our society, across and between nations, but also as a species. | |
| Probabl was created with a purpose. Its mission is to develop, maintain at the state of art, sustain, and disseminate a complete suite of open source tools for data science. Our commercial activities will unfold to support the long term mission.</description></item><item><title>Rewiring AI: From Mainframes to a Decentralized Internet Age</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/259</link><guid isPermaLink="false">259</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 259 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Rewiring AI: From Mainframes to a Decentralized Internet Age | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Daniel J. Beutel | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/259 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Rewiring AI: From Mainframes to a Decentralized Internet Age | |
| Description: | |
| AI is stuck in the mainframe era: the default way to compete is to build ever-larger centralized compute clusters and centralized data repositories. However, this approach is already outdated; decentralized AI is poised to become the new default. | |
| What will the internet era of AI look like? | |
| This talk explores the fundamental building- building blocks, future directions, and opportunities for the community to come together and accelerate the transition to a decentralized AI future.</description></item><item><title>An Airbus for AI: A New Model for International AI Cooperation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/53</link><guid isPermaLink="false">53</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 53 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: An Airbus for AI: A New Model for International AI Cooperation | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Joshua Tan | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/53 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: An Airbus for AI: A New Model for International AI Cooperation | |
| Description: | |
| What if middle-power nations banded together to build AI like they built Airbus? This session proposes a public-private consortium model—Airbus for AI—that allows countries like Spain, Canada, Sweden, and Switzerland to collaboratively develop sovereign AI systems. We’ll discuss why current approaches fail: underfunded national labs, fragmentation, and capture by foreign firms. We’ll then explore how a coordinated strategy could pool public compute, support open-source models, and deliver public AI systems aligned with democratic values. Attendees will break into teams to design the first six months of such a consortium—from governance and go-to-market strategy to public accountability.</description></item><item><title>Intro to live coding in XR with p5.js</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/135</link><guid isPermaLink="false">135</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 135 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Intro to live coding in XR with p5.js | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Tibor Udvari | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/135 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Intro to live coding in XR with p5.js | |
| Description: | |
| In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn how to create immersive web-based experiences using only open-source, browser-native tools. I’ll guide you through live-coding interactive sketches in p5.js, a creative coding library built on open web standards, and running them on the Oculus Quest 3 using WebXR. | |
| We’ll use P5LIVE, a collaborative online editor that lets participants see changes in real-time — no installations, no proprietary game engines. Everything runs in the browser and is freely accessible. | |
| You’ll work with real-time inputs like hand and head tracking, and create responsive visuals using p5.js shapes, colors, and motion. The focus is on rapid prototyping and playful experimentation — not complex rendering or game mechanics. | |
| Whether you’re new to XR or looking for open alternatives to closed development ecosystems, this workshop invites you to explore the future of spatial computing built on the open web.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Regulation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/70</link><guid isPermaLink="false">70</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 70 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Regulation | |
| track: 11 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Audrey Tang; Francesca Bria; Julie Brill | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/70 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "11", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Regulation | |
| Description: | |
| This debate will explore the necessity of unlearning traditional regulatory models to make way for new approaches that reflect rapidly evolving technologies, shifting power structures, and alternative ways of governance. | |
| Should we rethink how governments regulate innovation, or does deregulation risk chaos and exploitation? Can communities and decentralized networks create better forms of self-regulation, or do we still need centralized oversight? From AI ethics to financial systems, from platform governance to environmental policies, we will question whether regulation should always mean control—or if it can be reimagined as something more dynamic, participatory, and adaptive.</description></item><item><title>Agentic Observability - Making LLM Apps Debuggable, Trustworthy, and Scalable</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/236</link><guid isPermaLink="false">236</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 236 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Agentic Observability - Making LLM Apps Debuggable, Trustworthy, and Scalable | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Krishna Gade; Sharath Rajasekar; Irina Vidal Migallón; Raffi Krikorian | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/236 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Agentic Observability - Making LLM Apps Debuggable, Trustworthy, and Scalable | |
| Description: | |
| As AI agents become more autonomous—initiating actions, accessing live data, and making decisions without human oversight—the need for transparency and control is more urgent than ever. Traditional trust models can’t keep up with the pace and complexity of these systems. At the same time, most LLM applications are still black boxes in production, making it hard to debug failures, measure risk, or enforce accountability. | |
| In this session, Fiddler AI, Javelin AI, and Mozilla AI will introduce the concept of Agentic Observability—a new approach to making AI systems transparent, debuggable, and aligned with human values. Drawing on work with enterprise and government deployments, we’ll explore practical tools and techniques to trace agent reasoning, monitor behavior shifts, and simulate decision paths. We’ll also discuss how to apply runtime safeguards and fast trust evaluations to reduce harm and improve responsiveness in autonomous systems. | |
| This is a conversation about more than engineering—it’s about reclaiming agency in how we build, monitor, and govern AI. Whether you're a technologist, activist, policymaker, or designer, this session offers a window into how we can scale AI systems without sacrificing visibility, responsibility, or public trust. | |
| Panel participants: | |
| Krishna Gade, Fiddler | |
| Sharath Rajasekar, Javelin | |
| Irina Vidal, Mozilla.ai</description></item><item><title>Algorithmic Dissidence</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/149</link><guid isPermaLink="false">149</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 149 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Algorithmic Dissidence | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Domestic Data Streamers | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/149 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Algorithmic Dissidence | |
| Description: | |
| In this talk, we share insights from our experiments at Domestic Data Streamers on how AI can be used not just to optimize or predict, but to resist, remember, and repair. Algorithmic Dissidence explores how machine learning systems can be reimagined as tools for care, political accountability, and collective memory. From glitch-informed design to systems built to forget, we’ll dive into cases where AI becomes less about control and more about critique—helping institutions listen better, honor nuance, and make space for the human. | |
| Here some of the experiments: | |
| Reverse surveillance --> https://domesticdatastreamers.medium.com/reverse-surveillance-recalibrating-the-panopticon-through-government-watch-cdfe63499ef4 | |
| Uncoded gestures --> https://domesticdatastreamers.medium.com/uncoded-gestures-using-ai-to-reveal-shared-human-movements-through-time-32d1cfaa76a9 | |
| Synthetic memories --> https://www.syntheticmemories.net/</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Themis AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/222</link><guid isPermaLink="false">222</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 222 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Themis AI | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Oliver Band | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/222 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Themis AI | |
| Description: | |
| Unpredictable variations in model output quality have led to a reluctance of users to accept AI as part of their lives and integrate it into workflows. Uncertainty estimation is a necessary process that addresses this issue as an understanding of model reliability is needed for proper quality assurance. | |
| Themis AI was founded in 2021, originating from Dr. Daniela Rus’ lab at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. | |
| The team at Themis AI has implemented more than ten years of foundational research into Capsa, a software framework that automatically estimates uncertainty for any machine learning model.</description></item><item><title>Dreaming and Building an African Diasporic Public Interest Tech Ecosystem</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/26</link><guid isPermaLink="false">26</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 26 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Dreaming and Building an African Diasporic Public Interest Tech Ecosystem | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Fallon; Chenayi Mutambasere; Saidah Nash Carter | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/26 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Dreaming and Building an African Diasporic Public Interest Tech Ecosystem | |
| Description: | |
| How can Black, African, and African descended technologists, scholars, and community leaders reclaim power in global tech governance? This forum examines how the HEART Engines initiative—a community-driven, justice-centered model operating across HBCUs and Black Churches in the U.S.—can be scaled into a global African Diaspora public interest technology (PIT) infrastructure. Together, participants will co-design strategies that “unlearn” dominant narratives about who gets to shape digital futures and instead build power across African Diasporic institutions worldwide. | |
| This session will draw on the HEART Engines' U.S. success: a $12 million federally recommended proposal that trains technologists through culturally grounded certification, regional ecosystem mapping, and workforce placement. Convening partners will include foundations, tech companies, grassroots cultural institutions, and NGOs. The model centers public interest technology training in institutions long trusted by communities, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), faith-based and religious organizations, community health centers, and cultural arts centers. | |
| At MozFest, we aim to broaden this work into an Africa-Diaspora collaboration. The forum will feature organizers from the Caribbean, African countries, Colombia, Brazil, European Countries, and the US. Together, we will explore: (1) How to redistribute digital governance power to African and African descended communities; (2) The role of cultural institutions in digital inclusion and AI ethics; (3) Building a shared pipeline for training and policy impact across countries and continents. We welcome technologists, artists, educators, policymakers, and activists to help define a new model for inclusive tech governance that transcends borders and fosters African Diasporic tech futures everywhere.</description></item><item><title>Designing Inclusive Tech through Collective Care</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/147</link><guid isPermaLink="false">147</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 147 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Designing Inclusive Tech through Collective Care | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: TechHer | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/147 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Designing Inclusive Tech through Collective Care | |
| Description: | |
| Technology arrived like a promise, an innovation meant to save us, connect us, and solve our biggest challenges. But as our interactions with digital systems deepen and their evolution accelerates, it has become increasingly clear that technology is not inherently neutral and is certainly not always safe. While we work to put guardrails in place to mitigate harm, we still grapple with the magnitude of damage already embedded in existing systems. Worse still, we’re not fully prepared for the new forms of harm that emerging technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI), may bring. | |
| The harm encoded into today’s systems doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It mirrors and amplifies the injustices already present in our societies, especially those rooted in patriarchy, racism, and economic inequality. Technologies are often built by a narrow, homogenous group, often based in the Global North. Their worldviews are embedded in the data models, design logics, and algorithms that increasingly govern our lives. | |
| As a result, the Global South, particularly women, girls, and other minorities, are consistently positioned as passive users or victims, not as co-creators or decision-makers. This power asymmetry means that collective care, inclusivity, and safety are rarely foundational to how technologies are conceived or implemented. Furthermore, when digital tools are finally deployed, they often fail at content moderation, leaving platforms ill-equipped to address the proliferation of violence, including gendered harm. | |
| A critical, but mostly overlooked, aspect of this harm lies in language and cultural nuance. Technologies, particularly moderation and AI systems, are overwhelmingly optimised for English and lack contextual understanding of local languages or digital subcultures. In Nigeria, for example, a growing set of slang terms and coded language is being used to glorify fraud, spread misogyny, and reinforce violent norms, often without being flagged or moderated. These linguistic subcultures bleed into pop culture through music, social media, and podcasts, subtly grooming audiences and normalising harmful behaviours. | |
| Consequently, TechHer's session aims to interrogate how harmful tech systems reinforce gendered violence, cultural erasure and other forms of exclusion. It will explore how language, pop culture, and exclusionary design fuel online violence. Finally, our session will seek to spark participants’ collective imagination to proffer practical, community-rooted solutions for building inclusive and safe technologies.</description></item><item><title>In the age of AI Slop: Deciphering What’s Authentic</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/233</link><guid isPermaLink="false">233</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 233 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: In the age of AI Slop: Deciphering What’s Authentic | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mounir Ibrahim | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/233 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: In the age of AI Slop: Deciphering What’s Authentic | |
| Description: | |
| Join Truepic (a Mozilla Ventures startup) to explore how to think about navigating the blurred lines between authentic and synthetic digital content. Discover how visual risk extends beyond AI and why understanding it is now essential to trust, security, and informational integrity.</description></item><item><title>From Hype to Habits: How The Cryptocurrency Industry Changed Personal Security Norms</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/93</link><guid isPermaLink="false">93</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 93 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: From Hype to Habits: How The Cryptocurrency Industry Changed Personal Security Norms | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: noid | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/93 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: From Hype to Habits: How The Cryptocurrency Industry Changed Personal Security Norms | |
| Description: | |
| Hacks. Scams. Fraud. For many in security, cryptocurrency entered the scene as a vector for ransomware, not a model for protection. It's no wonder the industry has a reputation problem. | |
| But what if, behind the chaos, crypto has quietly pushed personal security forward? From passkeys and zero-knowledge proofs to widespread adoption of multisig wallets and hardware key management, the ecosystem has incubated real progress. As a security employee at a centralized exchange, I have the data to show it. | |
| In this talk, I’ll share my experiences from both inside and outside the industry. We’ll explore how crypto culture, tools, and threats have raised the bar for security professionals, and what the broader tech industry can learn. You might not walk away completely convinced, but you’ll leave with new opportunities for collaboration and insight.</description></item><item><title>Visit Firefox!</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2088</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2088</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2088 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Visit Firefox! | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Karen Kim | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2088 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Visit Firefox! | |
| Description: | |
| Visit our Firefox booth, where product team members will demo new features and host a series of events during MozFest. | |
| 1. Build with Us Booth | |
| Join our interactive space, which has a custom Firefox LEGO set that people can come help build throughout the festival. Tying into this activity, join our community contributors and learn more about Connect, Labs, Bugzilla, Codetribute, Localization, and other places where users can actively build with Mozilla. | |
| 2. Privacy and Security Station (Tony Cinotto and Luke Crouch) | |
| Join our Firefox, eXperience, and Identity (FXI) team for a training session highlighting best practices and new tools to tie in with the track of Unlearning Default Security. Here, we will showcase our other products beyond Firefox (Relay, Monitor, VPN…) and equip you with important knowledge to keep yourselves (and your loved ones) safe and secure online. | |
| 3. Beading our Values Activity (Gabrielle Lussier, UX Designer) | |
| What if we designed technology with the same care and intention as traditional beadwork? In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn a basic Métis beading technique and use colors and motifs to represent the values they believe should shape browsers and digital tools. Inspired by the Seven Generation Principle, the session offers a tactile way to reflect on what we carry into the future of web technology. | |
| 4. Check out our Firefox merchandise pop up for cool, limited edition options! You may also catch a glimpse of our mascot Foxy!</description></item><item><title>Reimagining Tech for Linguistic and Disability Inclusion</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/62</link><guid isPermaLink="false">62</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 62 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Reimagining Tech for Linguistic and Disability Inclusion | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Dr. Gina Moape; Sadik Shahadu | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/62 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Reimagining Tech for Linguistic and Disability Inclusion | |
| Description: | |
| The default design in the current technology ecosystem is deeply shaped by Western-centric norms, able-bodied and neurotypical user assumptions, high-bandwidth environments, and English as the dominant language. These defaults create structural barriers that marginalize millions, especially those with disabilities and speakers of non-dominant languages. Accessibility is often an afterthought, and multilingual support is rarely prioritized, despite the global linguistic diversity and the digital divide in rural or underserved areas. This session will interrogate these embedded design defaults and present a conceptual framework for inclusive, locally grounded, and user-centered design that actively centers language equity and accessibility for people with disabilities. Participants will engage with case studies, personal narratives, and design prompts that surface alternative approaches and challenge the one-size-fits-all mentality. The objective of the session is to critically examine how current technologies exclude users through language and ability biases and co-create a vision for inclusive design that centers accessibility and linguistic diversity. The final conceptual framework will be documented and distributed openly to designers, developers, policy advocates, community organizations, and educational institutions working toward more inclusive technology systems. The session will start with a presentation of the overview of the technology landscape (10 min), followed by a breakout group discussion(20 min), collaborative design mapping(15 min), and open reflection and resource sharing(15 min).</description></item><item><title>What the Public Thinks — And How to Turn It Into Power</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/66</link><guid isPermaLink="false">66</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 66 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: What the Public Thinks — And How to Turn It Into Power | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Daniel Stone | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/66 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: What the Public Thinks — And How to Turn It Into Power | |
| Description: | |
| This session invites participants to unlearn a persistent myth: that the public is too disengaged or too uninformed to participate meaningfully in decisions about AI governance. In fact, when we connect these issues to people’s everyday concerns — about fairness, jobs, safety, and accountability — we find something else entirely: a public that is deeply concerned and ready to act. | |
| This will be one of the first opportunities for our movements to engage with the findings of the AI Regulatory Compass — two comprehensive, nationally representative public opinion studies on community attitudes toward AI governance in the United Kingdom and the United States. These groundbreaking studies offer critical insights into how public values, literacy, and attitudes shape political conditions and legislative action — and how we can strategically shape them in return. | |
| Attendees will also gain early access to a new diagnostic tool designed to segment audiences — from our closest allies to the wider public — so that we can more effectively tailor our messages and campaigns to those who need to hear them most. | |
| This keynote will offer clear, actionable findings on: | |
| - How the public genuinely understands AI beyond surface-level perceptions — and how we can shift these views. | |
| - Who people trust to manage AI risks, who they hold accountable, and how we can leverage this in our advocacy claims. | |
| - The most persuasive narratives for shaping public debates and influencing government action. | |
| - Practical recommendations to build stronger public support and trust for ambitious, public interest-oriented AI regulation. | |
| Participants will gain unique, data-driven strategies to directly inform their advocacy, policymaking, and communication efforts, and with new tools for shifting power away from industry-led narratives and toward truly community-informed governance. The session will conclude with a live strategy clinic, where participants can raise real-world challenges and receive on-the-spot guidance on applying the findings to their own work.</description></item><item><title>Brave Futures Installation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2103</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2103</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2103 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Brave Futures Installation | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Elijah McKinnon; Fernando Garcia | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2103 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Brave Futures Installation | |
| Description: | |
| #BraveFutures is an intersectional film series that challenges filmmakers of all levels to create an entire short film within 2 weeks, using their city as the canvas. After successful editions in Johannesburg, Berlin, Guadalajara, London, and Salvador, the Emmy-nominated platform Open Television (OTV) is bringing a special pop-up edition of Brave Futures to Mozilla Festival 2025. This edition will feature a rotating exhibition at the historic Poble Espanyol in Barcelona, Spain, where 6 artists will respond to thought-provoking prompts and have their work displayed.</description></item><item><title>Gecko vs Goliath: Unlearning Dependence on Big Tech Infrastructure</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/260</link><guid isPermaLink="false">260</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 260 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Gecko vs Goliath: Unlearning Dependence on Big Tech Infrastructure | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mike Kaply | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/260 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Gecko vs Goliath: Unlearning Dependence on Big Tech Infrastructure | |
| Description: | |
| Explore the dependencies underpinning the modern web—especially the dominance of Google’s Chromium engine—and how AI-driven innovation, regulatory shifts, and growing distrust in big tech are creating opportunities to reimagine browser infrastructure. It highlights Mozilla’s Gecko engine as a rare case of true technological independence, arguing that reshaping tech governance starts with unlearning our acceptance of monoculture in browser engines.</description></item><item><title>Mapping Surveillance: Unlearning Neutrality and Reimagining Accountability with Citizen-Generated Data</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/23</link><guid isPermaLink="false">23</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 23 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Mapping Surveillance: Unlearning Neutrality and Reimagining Accountability with Citizen-Generated Data | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Thallita Gabriele Lopes Lima; Pablo de Moura Nunes de Oliveira | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/23 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Mapping Surveillance: Unlearning Neutrality and Reimagining Accountability with Citizen-Generated Data | |
| Description: | |
| How can citizens reclaim agency over the systems that surveil them? How can we unlearn the idea that data is the exclusive domain of governments or corporations, and instead reimagine it as a tool for collective accountability? | |
| This lab introduces the methodology behind O Panóptico, a citizen-driven project led by the Center for Studies on Security and Citizenship (CESeC) that monitors the use of facial recognition technologies by public security agencies in Brazil. Since 2019, the project has built an independent database by combining investigative research, public records requests (FOIA/LAI), media monitoring, and contributions from activists and communities affected by surveillance. | |
| Participants will learn how O Panóptico transforms dispersed and often inaccessible information into structured, visual, and actionable data. Through hands-on activities, we will explore how to identify, document, and analyze surveillance projects using a citizen-centered methodology. We will also discuss how data becomes a site of political struggle ,and how civic initiatives can challenge opacity and demand transparency from public institutions. | |
| The lab will focus on: | |
| a) Unlearning the myth of neutral technology in public safety discourse.. | |
| b) Understanding how citizen-generated data can expose gaps, risks, and abuses in surveillance systems. | |
| c) Mapping surveillance infrastructures through participatory and open-source practices. | |
| d) Building alliances across territories to democratize data and strengthen advocacy. | |
| No technical expertise is required, just curiosity and the desire to act. This session welcomes activists, researchers, technologists, journalists, artists, and community organizers who want to explore the politics of data and surveillance from the bottom up. By the end of the lab, participants will: understand how citizen data production can support transparency and accountability; gain tools for monitoring surveillance technologies in their own contexts; be equipped to collaboratively map and challenge digital infrastructures of control; and leave inspired to reimagine data not as a tool of extraction, but of resistance, care, and justice. | |
| Let’s build together a collective cartography of surveillance, from below.</description></item><item><title>An AI data center is set to be built in my town. How should we respond?</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/123</link><guid isPermaLink="false">123</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 123 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: An AI data center is set to be built in my town. How should we respond? | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Paz Peña | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/123 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: An AI data center is set to be built in my town. How should we respond? | |
| Description: | |
| The socio-environmental impacts of AI data centers are increasingly gaining ground in public opinion on all continents. Although they are not the only impacts, massive energy and freshwater consumption are two of the most worrying consequences. In a space where public policy is still unclear, the communities that suffer these impacts have been key in the world to question these projects. | |
| This session is a space to discuss the options available to communities when an AI data center announces that it is setting up in their community, and thus to understand the diverse socio-environmental problems of data centers and the complexities of local and national public policies on the issue. By understanding these complexities, we can imagine new forms of technology public policy. | |
| This session will be participatory. It will begin with a 15-minute presentation of Paz Peña's research on AI data centers in Latin America. Based on that, attendees will discuss different topics in groups, such as transparency and access to information, the power of big tech in the public policy imagination, and socio-environmental principles that should govern AI policies.</description></item><item><title>The MisFits Digital Futures Window</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/189</link><guid isPermaLink="false">189</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 189 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The MisFits Digital Futures Window | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Megha Mishra, Fatima Dossa, Yanni Zhou, Tiffany Troung, Kushal Sethi, Chaehee Lee; Noor Nabeela; Samina | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/189 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The MisFits Digital Futures Window | |
| Description: | |
| GirlsWhoML propose a crowdsourced futures window, reflective of diverse imaginaries concerning machine learning and the tech ecosystem. This installation would comprise multiple art forms - including posters, photos, drawings, poetry, narratives, audio and videos submitted during an open call. The ambition of this session is to encourage participants at the Mozilla Festival to engage with alternative perspectives on digital futures, namely those from feminist, non-Western and intergenerational perspectives. The installation would be an invitation and opportunity for festival participants to reflect, reframe and reimagine what the digital future could be. It would explore multiple pasts, presents and futures. It will showcase an array of past narratives concerning the digital - stories of ancestors to visuals from history; illustrate a variety of present-day perspectives and observations of the patterns around us; and ultimately be home to a pluriverse of hopes and fears for digital futures - the likely, the desirable and even the preposterous. Such an installation would be a vehicle for the disruption of dominant narratives around technology and unearthing of our core assumptions. Our futures labs with young women studying machine learning on campuses in the global south reveals that visions of the future need not be solely occupied with “profit-making” or competition for funding. They can be rooted in reframing and reimagining the very values that underpin the tech ecosystem we see today; from attention to access, justice, intersectionality and environment, to busting myths such as seeing “growth” not in “monetary terms” but as the enrichment of skills that builds community resilience. Our session would build on such experiences and further open the space for reimagining the digital. The installation offers a chance for festival attendees to reflect, to write, to draw, and to contribute ideas to further enrich "The Misfits Digital Futures Window" - a journey of expanding horizons, shifting narratives, and engaging with the full spectrum of possibilities. In doing so, the session invites introspection on “unlearning default design”, revealing the gap between visions that are visible and those which are systematically rendered invisible, and thus a chance to raise new questions that hit at the heart of technological innovation and the creation of new products. In an era of a few tech giants ruling the roost, it is vital that we create spaces for participatory futures-thinking and design, generating collective intelligence that can catalyse transformative action in service of visions for a better world.</description></item><item><title>The Generative AI Red Teaming Playground: An Interactive Lab on Vulnerabilities, Ethics, and Safeguards</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/52</link><guid isPermaLink="false">52</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 52 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The Generative AI Red Teaming Playground: An Interactive Lab on Vulnerabilities, Ethics, and Safeguards | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ayşegül Güzel | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/52 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The Generative AI Red Teaming Playground: An Interactive Lab on Vulnerabilities, Ethics, and Safeguards | |
| Description: | |
| Generative AI is transforming our world, but how secure, safe, and aligned is it, really? This interactive, lab-style workshop dives deep into the critical practice of AI red teaming. Forget passive learning – here, you'll roll up your sleeves and actively probe generative AI models to uncover their vulnerabilities, biases, and potential for misuse. | |
| Drawing from real-world red teaming initiatives (like those at DEFCON and NIST) and established techniques, participants will: | |
| - Engage in Simulated Red Teaming Exercises: Get hands-on experience testing AI models against various challenges. | |
| - Experiment with Jailbreak & Prompt Injection Techniques: Learn and apply methods like social engineering, character adoption, encoding attacks, and typographic tricks to try and bypass AI safeguards. | |
| - Analyze Model Responses: Collaboratively identify different types of vulnerabilities, from generating harmful content and misinformation to revealing unintended biases or security flaws. | |
| This workshop moves beyond theory to practical application. You'll gain first-hand insight into why red teaming is crucial for AI safety, application security, and platform integrity. We'll explore how it has evolved from military strategy and cybersecurity to become an indispensable tool for evaluating frontier AI models. | |
| Who is this for? | |
| Technologists, developers, researchers, policymakers, students, ethicists, and any curious digital citizen interested in understanding the practical challenges of making AI safer and more trustworthy. No prior red teaming experience is required, just an inquisitive mind! | |
| What you'll leave with: | |
| - Practical experience in basic AI red teaming techniques. | |
| - A deeper understanding of AI vulnerabilities and how to identify them. | |
| Insights into designing red teaming exercises. | |
| - A framework for thinking critically about AI safety, ethical implications, and the urgent need for robust evaluation and safeguards in the age of generative AI.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Polarization: How To Have better conversations about technologies?</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/92</link><guid isPermaLink="false">92</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 92 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Polarization: How To Have better conversations about technologies? | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Maryam Ahmad Kiyani; Gustavo Souza | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/92 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Polarization: How To Have better conversations about technologies? | |
| Description: | |
| Growing up in Pakistan—where over half the population remains offline and media-information literacy is nascent—I’ve seen digital technologies promised as connectors yet weaponized to amplify division at the highest levels. After former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s 2022 ouster and arrest and subsequent stifling of democratic processes, Pakistan banned X, an abrupt reminder of how swiftly human rights can be taken away. More recently, during the India–Pakistan conflict, India’s invocation of its Information Technology Act 2000 to block Pakistani X accounts in India. These are examples of state-sanctioned politics of hate and rule by fear. | |
| Simultaneously, AI-driven misinformation and deepfakes targeting women have corroded trust and driven women out of public life, fueling tech-facilitated gender-based violence. Yet young people in our communities lean on social media and generative tools like ChatGPT without the MIL skills to spot bias or grasp the ecological toll of data centers. Platforms that once promised a “global village” have become echo chambers, choking imagination and radical hope. | |
| This landscape breeds a violence of disengagement. We often define polarization as a clash of viewpoints, but its more insidious effect is driving people away from dialogue altogether. In Brazil’s 2022 elections, for example, voter absenteeism exceeded 20%, showing how polarization can be weaponized to suppress civic engagement and stall community-driven change. | |
| In response, our lab-style Majlis co-facilitated by me and Gustavo Souza, AI Strategy Specialist at UNDP Brazil, will break this cycle through a threefold process. First, we will guide participants in storytelling circles to surface moments when technology empowered or betrayed them, exposing governance gaps, regulatory blind spots, and corporate capture. Next, small groups will apply systems and design thinking to map these narratives onto a framework of key actors, policies, and fault lines, then prototype justice-rooted interventions. Finally, we will synthesize these insights into a stakeholder-centered roadmap that reimagines technology as a tool for collaboration, equity, and shared progress. | |
| By centering lived experience and blending participatory methods with strategic foresight, this session equips participants not just to critique broken systems but to imagine and begin building radical, inclusive digital futures. To unlearn polarization, though it demands practice and new skills, is to re-enable people everywhere to talk candidly about regulation and AI’s impacts in their communities worldwide.</description></item><item><title>Synthetic Memories: how AI can preserve our memories and collective identities?</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/75</link><guid isPermaLink="false">75</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 75 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Synthetic Memories: how AI can preserve our memories and collective identities? | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Airí Dordas | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/75 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Synthetic Memories: how AI can preserve our memories and collective identities? | |
| Description: | |
| Synthetic Memories envisions a future where AI is used not just for optimisation, but for collective healing and social justice. This initiative by Domestic Data Streamers explores how emerging technologies can preserve fragile memories, undocumented histories, and marginalised identities. The project aims to use AI and the arts to challenge dominant narratives, facilitate dissent, and foster new forms of collective creation. It proposes a future where technology nurtures empathy, connection, and the preservation of community identities, driving social repair and justice.</description></item><item><title>On Unlearning</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/139</link><guid isPermaLink="false">139</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 139 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: On Unlearning | |
| track: 11 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ruha Benjamin; Nabiha Syed | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/139 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "11", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: On Unlearning | |
| Description: | |
| To open Mozilla Festival 2025, Imagination: A Manifesto author Dr. Ruha Benjamin will join Nabiha Syed, Mozilla Foundation Executive Director, for a conversation that redefines unlearning as a radical act of possibility. | |
| From the biases baked into our digital worlds to the myths that shape our laws and institutions, this conversation will explore how power operates through the stories we inherit—and how breaking free from them can unlock new ways of thinking and building.</description></item><item><title>Mapping our body-territory in the digital space: a proposal against violence and extractivisms</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/122</link><guid isPermaLink="false">122</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 122 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Mapping our body-territory in the digital space: a proposal against violence and extractivisms | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Cecilia Ananías; Karen | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/122 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Mapping our body-territory in the digital space: a proposal against violence and extractivisms | |
| Description: | |
| One of the main weaknesses in addressing digital divides and violence is that the Internet is still conceived as a space detached from so-called real life, as if it had no physical and real consequences on bodies and territories. We forget that behind the Internet there is a network of submarine and terrestrial cables, devices -created with rare earth minerals-, data centers -that consume our water- and corporations. Something similar happens with the survivors of technology-facilitated violence: violence does not just remain floating in the forum or social network where it happened, it also leaves marks on their identities and bodies. | |
| Therefore, this space seeks to deconstruct these beliefs and make visible the networks and materialities that sustain the digital space, as well as its consequences on bodies and territories. The invitation is to build a cartography of the body-territory through dialogue and with a series of materialities that will give physical form to the reflection, updating the proposal with which the Colectivo Miradas Críticas del Territorio desde el Feminismo worked with indigenous and environmental activists in Ecuador and transferring these concepts to the digital space.</description></item><item><title>Kick out your personas: They're not real people anyway, and likely aren't the most effective research product for your team</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/112</link><guid isPermaLink="false">112</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 112 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Kick out your personas: They're not real people anyway, and likely aren't the most effective research product for your team | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Emily Goligoski | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/112 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Kick out your personas: They're not real people anyway, and likely aren't the most effective research product for your team | |
| Description: | |
| As a qualitative researcher who studies how people use news, I’ve seen thousands of artifacts based on survey, interview, and behavioral data. Personas, or fictional characters, are the most common. And they’re the least effective in practice. While well intended, and an attempt to center users in our design and development processes, I see major avoidable flaws in these crafted characters. And you can leave Barcelona with upgraded research approaches that will do more for you. | |
| Why the skepticism? When it comes to personas, I've found in my work for Mozilla Foundation and newsrooms that: | |
| - Many versions aren't specific or differentiated enough from each other. Rather than painting a clear picture of a person, they can fall into awkward amalgamation territory. | |
| - They are too often imagined. They look like an output from rigorous research, but sometimes (gasp!) are not based on research with humans. Don’t fall prey to this user research productivity theater. | |
| - They can be flat and forgettable (tell me what you remember about “Ian the Information Architect”?). Teams attempt to do too much with them, and when they don’t represent real lived experiences and users’ points of frustration, it’s hard to feel motivated to update personas or revisit them. | |
| It’s time to replace them. Enter Jobs to Be Done, user needs, and co-design approaches that are more appropriate for modern makers. They can do much of the lifting that has been put on personas, and do it better. We’ll explore the differences, and ways that these artifacts can get closer to representing the complex experiences of the people we want to serve with our work. Come see how these have worked for other organizations and the products and services that have resulted. | |
| About the speaker: Emily Goligoski researches consumers to help media organizations boost their revenue. She has held management roles at The Atlantic, the future of work media company Charter, and the Membership Puzzle Project, a public interest research project at NYU. She was the first user experience researcher embedded in The New York Times newsroom. She is an adjunct professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, teaching about the business of media. You can see user needs work she has led here: https://building.theatlantic.com/weve-spent-two-years-studying-readers-listeners-needs-of-the-atlantic-2a84ff9a57d1</description></item><item><title>Unlearning the Myth of the “Free Internet”: How Surveillance Capitalism Shapes Our Tools</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/250</link><guid isPermaLink="false">250</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 250 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning the Myth of the “Free Internet”: How Surveillance Capitalism Shapes Our Tools | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/250 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning the Myth of the “Free Internet”: How Surveillance Capitalism Shapes Our Tools | |
| Description: | |
| Many users still believe the internet is free—as in costless—but it's paid for with personal data. This talk explores how tools like Firefox, Mozilla VPN, Relay, and Monitor are part of a new model: one that unlearns data exploitation as a business model and replaces it with trust-based value exchange. | |
| Unpack how Mozilla VPN and Firefox promote user sovereignty in contrast to platforms that extract value. Dive into the importance of trustworthy infrastructure and how open, user-respecting tools restore control.</description></item><item><title>We Can Build What We Need: Examples of Reclaiming AI for Media, Building Community, and Personal Innovation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2087</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2087</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2087 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: We Can Build What We Need: Examples of Reclaiming AI for Media, Building Community, and Personal Innovation | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Josh Nesbit; Rahul Satija | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2087 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: We Can Build What We Need: Examples of Reclaiming AI for Media, Building Community, and Personal Innovation | |
| Description: | |
| In a time when generative AI is increasingly centralized, this session showcases how individuals and communities are reclaiming agency by building what they actually need. Join us for a dynamic “show-and-tell” featuring builders who are creating offline, open-source, and custom AI tools rooted in care, creativity, and accessibility. | |
| From solo innovators to collaborative efforts, we’ll explore real-world projects that tackle media workflows, connection and care infrastructure, and personal experimentation with small, sovereign systems. Expect lightning demos, live Q&A, and a hands-on “build-it” challenge to spark your own ideas. Whether you’re an artist, technologist, or curious community member, this session is a space to dream, tinker, and build together, on your terms.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Skej</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/212</link><guid isPermaLink="false">212</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 212 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Skej | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Paul Canetti | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/212 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Skej | |
| Description: | |
| Your very own AI scheduling assistant. Skej takes care of your calendar tasks like booking meetings, rescheduling, event reminders, and more. Skej handles the back and forth with your contacts, finding the perfect meeting time, just like a human assistant.</description></item><item><title>AI alignment is not a math problem: Unlearning the default values inside the machine</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/50</link><guid isPermaLink="false">50</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 50 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI alignment is not a math problem: Unlearning the default values inside the machine | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Pooja Vijay Kumar | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/50 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI alignment is not a math problem: Unlearning the default values inside the machine | |
| Description: | |
| We often treat AI alignment as a technical challenge—fine-tuning models to match our instructions. But what if the real problem isn’t the algorithm, but the defaults we carry into it? | |
| This talk challenges the dominant narrative of alignment as purely mathematical. Instead, we explore how default assumptions—about values, norms, and who gets to decide—become quietly encoded into intelligent systems. Whether in financial tools, justice algorithms, or public infrastructure, these defaults shape outcomes long before a line of code is written. | |
| We’ll see examples from real-world systems and draw from research in AI ethics, moral philosophy, and global governance. More importantly, we’ll uncover how alignment isn’t a technical spec—it’s a participatory, negotiated process that must reflect pluralistic values. | |
| Together, we’ll explore: | |
| • What defaults are we importing into the machine? | |
| • Who gets to define what “aligned” looks like? | |
| • How do we unlearn the idea that ethical AI starts with code?</description></item><item><title>From Arab Intelligence to AI: Collaboration at the Core</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/141</link><guid isPermaLink="false">141</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 141 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: From Arab Intelligence to AI: Collaboration at the Core | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Rawan Damen | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/141 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: From Arab Intelligence to AI: Collaboration at the Core | |
| Description: | |
| In a region where data scarcity and linguistic complexity challenge the development of AI, network-driven collaboration offers a powerful path forward. For over five years, ARIJ (Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism) has been at the forefront of building trustworthy Arabic-language AI — through its pioneering AI Strategy, comprehensive AI Guide, and tailored Arabic-language tools. This session explores how engaging diverse stakeholders — from journalists and fact-checkers to educators, artists, and legal experts — can enrich Arabic AI development. By collecting authentic language samples, preserving cultural nuance, and integrating media and art, ARIJ’s approach ensures that AI technologies do more than process Arabic — they reflect its depth, diversity, and lived realities across the MENA region.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Platform Neutrality: Palestinian Digital Rights and the Power of Documentation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/130</link><guid isPermaLink="false">130</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 130 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Platform Neutrality: Palestinian Digital Rights and the Power of Documentation | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Taysir Mathlouthi | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/130 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Platform Neutrality: Palestinian Digital Rights and the Power of Documentation | |
| Description: | |
| This interactive Lab invites participants to explore how Palestinians are systematically silenced in the digital space and how civil society is fighting back. Using 7amleh’ and ELSC's Digital Rights Tracker in Europe, participants will learn how documentation and narrative framing can be used to resist digital repression, raise awareness, and push for accountability. Together, we will reflect on what it means to challenge the illusion of platform neutrality and build collective power through open, community-driven digital rights tools rooted in lived experience.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Foreign Aid: Building a Decentralized Future for Crisis Response</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/45</link><guid isPermaLink="false">45</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 45 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Foreign Aid: Building a Decentralized Future for Crisis Response | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nasrat Khalid; Nasrat Khalid | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/45 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Foreign Aid: Building a Decentralized Future for Crisis Response | |
| Description: | |
| The traditional foreign aid system is broken. It was built on outdated assumptions of centralization, dependency, and control. In a time of global crises, communities on the frontlines are often the last to receive support and the least empowered to shape how that support reaches them. This session invites participants to unlearn the deeply embedded models of humanitarian aid and explore how a decentralized, community-driven platform, AidOs, that has been created by Aseel, is transforming how help is delivered. | |
| AidOs is a decentralized humanitarian operating system that empowers local networks to distribute aid with transparency, speed, and dignity. Through its Atalan (Heroes) Network, community members act as local aid agents, delivering packages, registering beneficiaries for digital OMID IDs, and building data systems from the ground up. This model eliminates traditional intermediaries and places agency directly in the hands of those closest to the crisis. | |
| We’ll share how Aseel’s model is being used across Afghanistan to reach all 34 provinces with zero foreign logistical footprint. We’ll examine the role of open APIs, ethical data collection (via Ferni), and digital identity in enabling both transparency for donors and autonomy for beneficiaries. Participants will learn how AidOs is designed to be interoperable, scalable, and applicable far beyond Afghanistan, from refugee camps to climate-hit regions globally. | |
| This talk isn’t just about showcasing a tech solution. It’s about asking hard questions: | |
| What happens when we design humanitarian systems that don’t assume centralized power is necessary? | |
| How can we build digital tools that serve both transparency and trust in fractured environments? | |
| What does it mean to decolonize aid in the 21st century, not in theory, but in code, community, and practice? | |
| Join us to explore what humanitarian aid could look like when led by the people it’s meant to serve. Walk away with a new perspective on aid systems—and an invitation to partner, invest, or collaborate in building a future where help arrives faster, fairer, and on local terms.</description></item><item><title>A congolese perspective on tech, digital infrastructure and extractivism</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/137</link><guid isPermaLink="false">137</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 137 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: A congolese perspective on tech, digital infrastructure and extractivism | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Génération Lumière | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/137 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: A congolese perspective on tech, digital infrastructure and extractivism | |
| Description: | |
| From smartphones to data centers, the technologies powering today’s digital transformation rely on raw materials like cobalt and coltan, many of which are mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) under exploitative and often violent conditions. These extractive practices have a long history, deeply rooted in a colonial tradition inherited from the past, where human lives and the environment are seen as expendable for the sake of technological progress. | |
| As digital technologies, and now artificial intelligence, grow in scope and influence, so too does their environmental and human cost. | |
| This workshop will explore the materiality of technology, from the mine to the final product, and examine the human and environmental impacts tied to its production. Together, we will reflect on how to imagine and work toward a digital transition that is less extractive, more transparent, and grounded in ecological responsibility and human dignity.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning from Open Web and Open Source History</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2092</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2092</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2092 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning from Open Web and Open Source History | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Brian Behlendorf | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2092 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning from Open Web and Open Source History | |
| Description: | |
| The Mozilla community's fight for the Open Web, and the broader fight for open source and standards, came of age in the 1990s, a time of boundless growth and optimism about our world getting ever more online and interconnected, defeating the proprietary world of Big Tech along the way. By many measures, we won! We kept the Web open and generative, and in doing so created something very valuable for all members of the public. But then cloud computing, app stores, locked hardware platforms and now AI technologies have dramatically changed the landscape. What are the lessons from Mozilla's early days that are work re-examining, perhaps even unlearning, to make room for something new? What concepts do we hold dear- such as the right to "fork" source code, or an adherence to multivendor web standards - that hold us back in 2025? In the style of Marie Kondo, we will hold a series of lessons and principles from Mozilla's history in our hand and answer for ourselves if it "sparks joy". Depending on the answers, we'll then discuss what we as Mozillians can do next.</description></item><item><title>Memorial of Serial Numbers</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/187</link><guid isPermaLink="false">187</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 187 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Memorial of Serial Numbers | |
| track: 25 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Swarna Manjari; Kriti Bajpai; Kriti Bajpai | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/187 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "25", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Memorial of Serial Numbers | |
| Description: | |
| Welcome to the Memorial of Serial Numbers. We are half a century knee-deep in the AI revolution. Do we know what we ought to know? | |
| It is 2050—our children learn of crusading technological empires pillaging invisible lands and extracting visible resources. Who are the fallen, you ask? | |
| The Clickworkers. | |
| People who once sat by in their tiny corners of their dimly lit up homes chipping away at microtasks - anything from marking the area of trees, moderating live videos or answering a questionnaire. | |
| In this dedicated Memorial, take a walk through countless graves, pay your respects to faceless workers, and contribute to donations that unite for a cause. You may notice that the grave is abuzz with life at daytime. This graveyard is the work of data cooperatives, and is one of the last remaining repositories of their ancestors. | |
| Once you find yourself dwelling in the history of these people who spent laborious hours mothering a monstrous technology that governs us today, let us go back to all that consists of the resources required to build an AI empire. The construction of such towering superintelligence isn’t a mere intangible string of words and ideas–-it’s tactical. It can be felt and seen and touched. It’s the land you walk on, the water you drink and the energy that fuels everyday life. The Clouds were here on our lands; they were hot and loud, claustrophobic, and grey. | |
| Then comes night. The sun takes away its light and life and the graveyard turns eerie and dark. Power haunts and olden tales of extraction and violence resurface. It is time to uncover the true villains at play. Underneath the soil, the dark underworld still exists. Gold, diamonds and billions. Stacked against the graves, the eternal masters of the trade know no death. They continue to skilfully extract resources, labour and time. Pitch your best strategy as the Master or the Slave in a combat of capital. Hire or Fire, Work or Protest, Quell or Unionise in a round of cards that can build or break you with the sleight of a hand. Is it all luck? Or does injustice have a strategy? | |
| Come. Play the game to find out. | |
| "Immaterial" is an overarching commentary on game design, amoral tech megastructures, and life itself. We apologise in advance for the frustration that you might end up feeling after the game.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning AI Hype: Making Context-Aware Choices</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/64</link><guid isPermaLink="false">64</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 64 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning AI Hype: Making Context-Aware Choices | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Lesedi | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/64 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning AI Hype: Making Context-Aware Choices | |
| Description: | |
| The future of tech won’t be built by sticking to old rules and nowhere is this clearer than in the rush to adopt AI. While AI is often presented as a universal solution, communities across the Global Majority are increasingly asking: who really benefits from these tools, and at what cost? | |
| This session invites participants to unlearn dominant assumptions about AI its inevitability, neutrality, and universality and instead explore how community-based and under-resourced groups can make responsible, context-aware decisions about if, when, and how to engage with AI. | |
| Grounded in The Engine Room’s research and direct support work with civil society organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, this session highlights: | |
| - Real-life dilemmas around AI adoption, refusal, or adaptation | |
| - The skill, capacity, and infrastructure realities facing grassroots actors | |
| - Participatory and frugal approaches to exploring AI in low-resource contexts | |
| - Why refusal or slow experimentation can be responsible, strategic choices | |
| We’ll introduce tools and prompts from our Responsible Data work and AI Playground idea an interactive learning space that helps organizations explore real-world case studies without needing deep technical expertise. Through storytelling and facilitated reflection, participants will challenge the “default settings” of AI and reimagine what ethical, community-driven decision-making can look like. | |
| Participants will walk away with: | |
| - A practical framework for evaluating AI choices rooted in values, not hype | |
| - Stories of civil society experimentation and resistance | |
| - Guiding questions and tools to take back to their own contexts | |
| - A sense of community and possibility around building alternative approaches | |
| This session shows how those often excluded from AI conversations are already leading powerful, grounded responses that deserve attention and resourcing.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning surveillance: the stories we carry and the futures we can imagine</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/33</link><guid isPermaLink="false">33</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 33 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning surveillance: the stories we carry and the futures we can imagine | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Elina Castillo Jiménez | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/33 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning surveillance: the stories we carry and the futures we can imagine | |
| Description: | |
| What does it mean to feel safe in a world that watches you? | |
| This Talk explores the personal and political cost of surveillance — not just as a set of tools, but as a culture many of us inherit, internalize, and even reproduce. From spyware deployed against journalists and human rights defenders to the quiet, everyday ways our bodies and behaviors are policed, this session challenges attendees to unlearn dominant narratives about protection and safety. | |
| Led by Elina Castillo Jiménez, a human rights lawyer and advocacy strategist working at the intersection of surveillance, technology, and systemic inequality, this Talk blends storytelling, policy insight, and critical reflection. Drawing from her lived experience as an immigrant and daughter of the Caribbean, and over a decade of international human rights work, Elina unpacks how surveillance systems (including AI, spyware, and data extraction) impact marginalized communities, shape leadership, and reinforce systems of control. | |
| But this Talk is not just about the harms. It’s an invitation to reimagine: What would it look like to build collective safety not rooted in punishment or paranoia, but in care, dignity, and consent? | |
| This session will invite participants to: | |
| 1. Explore how dominant concepts of safety and “national security” are shaped by systems of surveillance and control. | |
| 2. Understand the impact of spyware and tech-fueled surveillance on the civic power and everyday leadership of marginalized and racialized communities. | |
| 3. Recognize how internalized surveillance manifests in our relationships, workplaces, and decision-making. | |
| 4. Reflect on what we must unlearn — individually and collectively — to build digital and physical spaces rooted in justice and solidarity. | |
| Attendees will leave with frameworks and prompts to reimagine their role in resisting surveillance culture, whether as technologists, organizers, policymakers, artists, funders, or community members. | |
| This Talk aims to push us beyond critique toward imagination: a future where safety isn’t something that’s done to us, but something we define, build, and protect with each other.</description></item><item><title>Compute Infrastructure and Inclusive Voice Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/264</link><guid isPermaLink="false">264</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 264 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Compute Infrastructure and Inclusive Voice Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Responsible Computing Challenge (Moz Education) | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/264 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Compute Infrastructure and Inclusive Voice Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa | |
| Description: | |
| This session explores how accessible compute infrastructure (i.e. hardware, tools, and platforms that power AI) can drive inclusive voice technology in Sub-Saharan Africa. In a region where many languages, identities, and communities remain underrepresented in mainstream AI development, default, one-size-fits-all tech solutions often result in exclusion, limited access, and cultural erasure. By unlearning these defaults and democratizing access to compute resources, through open-source tools and low-cost cloud platforms, we can empower grassroots innovators, researchers, and communities to build voice technologies that reflect local languages, lived experiences, and diverse identities. The session will highlight how open infrastructure can unlock socially rooted, context-aware voice solutions that serve real needs and more importantly beyond Western assumptions of tech design.</description></item><item><title>Invisible by Algorithmic Design: Rights-Based Perspectives on Content Suppression</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/43</link><guid isPermaLink="false">43</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 43 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Invisible by Algorithmic Design: Rights-Based Perspectives on Content Suppression | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Shannon Mathew; Rhian Farnworth; Martha | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/43 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Invisible by Algorithmic Design: Rights-Based Perspectives on Content Suppression | |
| Description: | |
| The recent dismaying overhaul in content moderation policies across Meta platforms poses an important and urgent question for rights and health advocates – does this change amount to an attack on content moderation, or is it an attack on content itself i.e. is this about free speech, or about curtailing certain speech that challenges dominant narratives and norms? | |
| Even before the dramatic changes brought about by Meta in its content moderation efforts, sexuality education content has had a grim history of being algorithmically censored, shadow-banned, flagged, and/or ad-blocked, thereby already having borne the brunt of “content moderation” that has always silenced and suppressed certain forms of speech. | |
| But these tactics of suppression are not unique to sex education. Across multiple domains, marginalised voices have routinely faced disproportionate censorship. Activists working on racial justice have seen content removed or demoted under vague claims of “hate speech,” even when describing lived experiences of racism. Climate activists have reported algorithmic suppression of content warning about corporate ecological harm. Mental health advocates encounter barriers when discussing topics like self-harm, eating disorders, or trauma, even in clearly educational contexts. Feminist and queer creators are disproportionately flagged, particularly when challenging cisnormative patriarchal discourses. | |
| In this proposed inter- and trans-disciplinary panel, we will bring together sexuality education advocates, digital rights activists, and trust and safety professionals, alongside experts from intersecting domains – such as climate justice, racial equity, or mental health – to discuss, reflect and share how this next era of AI-driven online content moderation will not only impact access to critical content in online spaces, but will also influence, shape, and challenge the offline-online public discourse(s) and policies that underpin equity, representation, and justice. | |
| Moreover, the panel will interrogate the effectiveness of prevailing regulatory frameworks – such as the EU AI Act and Digital Services Act (DSA) – in enabling and ensuring freedom of expression across these intersecting and often marginalised topics. It will ask: who gets to speak and be heard in the digital public square? And what are the socio-political costs when algorithms and platform policies systematically silence the already unheard? | |
| This conversation aims to push beyond single-issue advocacy and build solidarity among diverse fields to reimagine content moderation as a public interest issue – one that must be accountable not just to corporate interests or political pressures, but to the pluralistic needs of our global, interconnected societies.</description></item><item><title>Public Code for Public Services: the case study of unlearning Big Tech at school in Barcelona</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/32</link><guid isPermaLink="false">32</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 32 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Public Code for Public Services: the case study of unlearning Big Tech at school in Barcelona | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Simona Levi | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/32 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Public Code for Public Services: the case study of unlearning Big Tech at school in Barcelona | |
| Description: | |
| In Barcelona, Xnet has developed and implemented in 10 schools jointly with the City Council, a free and auditable software tool designed to correct past mistakes that hindered migration away from proprietary systems. | |
| This pilot also gave rise to the official report Proposal for a Sovereign and Democratic Digitalisation of Europe (https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/dae77969-7812-11ec-9136-01aa75ed71a1), commissioned to Xnet by the European Parliament at the request of its President, David Sassoli. | |
| Related: a proposal for a sovereign public email service, and how institutions must stop undermining digital talent through unfair competition.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Privacy</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/60</link><guid isPermaLink="false">60</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 60 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Privacy | |
| track: 11 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Alex Hanna; Udbhav Tiwari; Lauren Hendry Parsons | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/60 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "11", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Privacy | |
| Description: | |
| The debate will focus on the tension between privacy as a fundamental right and data as a public resource, as well as the balance between radical transparency and data protection. These opposing ends of the debate raise critical questions about how information is shared, controlled, and safeguarded in the digital age.</description></item><item><title>Anti-surveillance mechanisms for LGBTQ+ Community</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/165</link><guid isPermaLink="false">165</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 165 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Anti-surveillance mechanisms for LGBTQ+ Community | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Sarah Aoun; Paige Collins; Norman Shams | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/165 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Anti-surveillance mechanisms for LGBTQ+ Community | |
| Description: | |
| Around the world, LGBTQ+ communities are disproportionately targeted by surveillance systems that threaten their safety, privacy, and freedom of expression. The digital world we live in creates new risks and forms of surveillance, from corporations, governments, and even other users, for queer people. This session will be a practical discussion on risks and helping to work through the realities of being queer in this digital world.</description></item><item><title>From Algorithms to Commons: Designing Equitable Data Harvesting</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/88</link><guid isPermaLink="false">88</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 88 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: From Algorithms to Commons: Designing Equitable Data Harvesting | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: magda mosi; Francisco | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/88 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: From Algorithms to Commons: Designing Equitable Data Harvesting | |
| Description: | |
| Through the S+T+Arts Musae residency, we have developed a planting generator, learning from nature to develop systems for regenerative farming. The next step for our AI-driven planting generator is to learn and improve, it depends on ever‐richer- and today lacking- datasets—from farmers’ yield logs to school‐garden observations, municipal green‐space records, and backyard gardener notes. But who will own this data? Who will benefit when the model spins greater insights? In this 60-minute Forum, we co-design novel data-harvesting and value-sharing frameworks that ensure every contributor—professional, amateur, or institution—receives fair returns. Through facilitated discussion and rapid prototyping, participants will sketch out governance, revenue, and incentive models that could underpin not only our planting system but any emerging “data commons.” Not a farmer or grower? we will use empathy tools and roleplaying to make you feel like a stakeholder, the structures we develop together, will be applicable to other systems of growing data.</description></item><item><title>(Re) Imagining our Future: A Hands-on Workshop redefining our relationship to technology, our environment and each other</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/240</link><guid isPermaLink="false">240</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 240 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: (Re) Imagining our Future: A Hands-on Workshop redefining our relationship to technology, our environment and each other | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jacob Park | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/240 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: (Re) Imagining our Future: A Hands-on Workshop redefining our relationship to technology, our environment and each other | |
| Description: | |
| Curator: BSR (TBC) in partnership with Jenny | |
| Facilitator (Green Screen collab? Maya Richman, Fieke Jansen and/or Michelle Thorne and/or Lori Regattieri as alum reps and star facilitators of this type of thing) | |
| What if technology was designed not to extract, but to nurture? What if it healed rather than harmed people, communities, and the planet? | |
| This deep, participatory workshop invites participants to collectively dream up radical new futures where technology supports the well-being of all living beings, rather than serving the interests of capital and control. We begin by critically unpacking the current relationship between technology and the environment: how systems of exploitation, environmental degradation, and social inequality are reinforced—and often enabled—by dominant tech infrastructures. | |
| Then, through immersive visioning exercises, we’ll ask: | |
| - What would the world look and feel like if tech was built for collective care, justice, and sustainability? | |
| - What could exist that doesn’t yet? | |
| - What needs to end for something better to begin? | |
| Participants will co-create bold, speculative futures and begin to reverse-engineer what it would take to get there, identifying mindset shifts, systemic changes, and local actions that can build the foundations of a post-capitalist, ecologically just world. | |
| This is not a traditional workshop. It’s a futures lab: a space for imagination, collaboration, and concrete action planning. | |
| What Participants Will Walk Away With: | |
| - A reframed understanding of the tech-environment relationship through an anti-capitalist, justice-centered lens | |
| - Collective visions of the future that center human and ecological well-being | |
| - Clear, concrete steps and principles to move from dreaming to doing | |
| - A shared framework for building and supporting tech rooted in care, reciprocity, and interdependence | |
| - Creative outputs (visuals, manifestos, mindmaps) to take home and build upon | |
| Session Format Includes: | |
| - Guided reflection: “What world are we living in now and who is it for?” | |
| - Futures imagining & storytelling circles | |
| - Group creative mapping: designing tools, systems, and structures we wish existed | |
| - Action planning: identifying changes needed at the personal, institutional, and policy level | |
| - Optional commitment wall: “One thing I’ll do to bring this world closer” | |
| This workshop is a space for healing, dreaming, and action. It is for anyone ready to reimagine technology not as a product, but as a practice of care, connection, and liberation. | |
| Let’s dream big…then get to work.</description></item><item><title>Tactical Tools for Resisting Internet Shutdowns in MENA</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/127</link><guid isPermaLink="false">127</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 127 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Tactical Tools for Resisting Internet Shutdowns in MENA | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Kassem Mnejja; Mahmoud Elmasry | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/127 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Tactical Tools for Resisting Internet Shutdowns in MENA | |
| Description: | |
| Internet shutdowns are a growing weapon of authoritarian control across the MENA region, used to silence dissent, conceal state violence, and cut off entire communities from the world. This lab-style session invites participants to unlearn the assumption that connectivity is a given—and instead reimagine resistance through offline, community-centered tactics for documentation and evidence preservation. | |
| Grounded in field-tested practices from frontline defenders and human rights documenters, this session draws on the Documenting During Internet Shutdowns guide developed by WITNESS, Access Now, and other partners and allies from KeepItOn alliance. It focuses on hands-on strategies to prepare for and operate in total or partial blackouts, including secure device setup, app selection, metadata preservation, and peer-to-peer sharing methods. | |
| Participants will learn how to: | |
| - Set up mobile devices for offline use with minimal risk, including secure configuration and the use of tools like ProofMode. | |
| - Choose documentation apps based on developer trust, encryption, metadata handling, and data exportability. | |
| - Practice offline content sharing using OTG and wireless drives, and explore methods for content obfuscation to reduce visibility during confiscation or inspection. | |
| - Maintain the integrity and verifiability of media, even when filming in urgent or hostile contexts. | |
| In this lab, participants will play an active role as both learners and contributors. The space will invite them to share their own practices and experiences, helping to build a shared pool of knowledge and strengthen collective expertise within the group. | |
| This lab is particularly relevant for activists, community-based practitioners, and technologists working in and in solidarity with communities facing digital repression. We’ll explore how internet shutdowns are not simply connectivity issues, but systemic digital harms that target autonomy, visibility, and truth-telling. In response, documentation becomes an act of defiance and care. | |
| We’ll explore how these strategies can be adapted, localized, and scaled transforming harm into collective resilience. By the end of the session, participants will leave with not just tools, but a critical framework for understanding shutdowns as part of a broader system of digital control and a set of concrete practices to challenge it.</description></item><item><title>(Re)Wiring Growth While Maintaining Open Source Values</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/205</link><guid isPermaLink="false">205</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 205 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: (Re)Wiring Growth While Maintaining Open Source Values | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Raffi Krikorian; Oussama Elachqar; Ketan Umare | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/205 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: (Re)Wiring Growth While Maintaining Open Source Values | |
| Description: | |
| We bring together technical co-founders and CTOs from the Mozilla Ventures portfolio to explore how they’ve balanced innovation, scale, and sustainability without compromising transparency or community principles. The panel will unpack real-world lessons on growing responsibly—where open collaboration meets the demands of modern business with Raffi Krikorian, a leader in technology, policy, and civic innovation.</description></item><item><title>Meedan: Building an AI-powered Tool that Serves the Public Interest</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/266</link><guid isPermaLink="false">266</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 266 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Meedan: Building an AI-powered Tool that Serves the Public Interest | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Caio Almeida; Scott Hale | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/266 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Meedan: Building an AI-powered Tool that Serves the Public Interest | |
| Description: | |
| AI systems are increasingly being used to mediate access to information, but most are built with little transparency, limited public input, and a focus on commercial use cases. Meedan believes there’s a need and an opportunity to design AI tools that respond to community needs, center context, and serve the public interest. This means rethinking how data is selected, how outputs are evaluated, and how people are invited into the process. | |
| This booth invites you to discuss with us and try out an early prototype of a tool we're building to help people explore and make sense of public interest information, from news articles to community knowledge. You’ll be able to chat with the system, test how it responds, and share your thoughts. We’re especially interested in feedback about how this kind of tool can be more transparent and useful in real-world contexts. It's an early experiment, and your input will help us shape its direction going forward.</description></item><item><title>V.I.B.E (Viral Ideology Broadcast Experiment)</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/191</link><guid isPermaLink="false">191</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 191 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: V.I.B.E (Viral Ideology Broadcast Experiment) | |
| track: 87 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Giulia; Elena | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/191 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "87", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: V.I.B.E (Viral Ideology Broadcast Experiment) | |
| Description: | |
| V.I.B.E explores the rise of "vibe culture" as a dominant mode of sense-making in the post-truth era, through a speculative electoral campaign and interactive installation. In a media landscape characterized by algorithmic bubbles and short-form video content, rational discourse is being threatened by ambiently spread propaganda—vibes. Critically engaging with the memetic strategies of contemporary far-right movements, the project investigates how hyper-online weaponized aesthetics normalize violence and advance authoritarianism through affectual manipulation. | |
| We want to respond by exaggerating this logic with the creation of a physical installation consisting of a voting booth, screens, merch, and election ephemera. The screens will play incoherent, fragmented videos that draw from social media content and internet aesthetics: anime, angels, and cute visuals polluted with references to violence, fascism, and fringe extremist ideologies. It will be an audiovisual overload, an assault on the senses with no clear arguments - just “vibes” to absorb. | |
| The goal is to stage an affective experience of contemporary political communication (ambient propaganda) - one where ideology is ambient, nonlinear, and memetic. Visitors won’t leave with answers or positions, but with a gut-level sense of how aesthetics, algorithms, and content overload shape belief today. | |
| This work has been realized during CODE 25, an annual co-creation project, where participants were asked to raise awareness about digital rights through dialogue, critical discussions, and artistic interventions. The program is supported by IMPAKT (Utrecht), in collaboration with Werktank, NØ SCHOOL, PrivacySalon, and Kunsthal Mechelen. | |
| Project realized by | |
| Collaborators: Shao-Chun Hsu (fabrication), Claudio Castro Chaponan (coding).</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Growth</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/28</link><guid isPermaLink="false">28</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 28 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Growth | |
| track: 11 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Peter Rojas; Catherine Bracy; Harry Booth | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/28 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "11", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Growth | |
| Description: | |
| The global race for data, users, and reach has become the engine driving most of today’s digital ecosystems. This has led to disregarding the rights, privacy, and security of individuals—especially in the Global South, Indigenous communities, and marginalized groups. | |
| This debate will ask: What would it mean to unlearn growth as the ultimate measure of success in technology? Can we imagine and build digital ecosystems rooted instead in care, accountability, and justice?</description></item><item><title>What Does Your Tech Stack Say About You? A Live Security and Autonomy Diagnostic for Organisations</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/76</link><guid isPermaLink="false">76</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 76 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: What Does Your Tech Stack Say About You? A Live Security and Autonomy Diagnostic for Organisations | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Paula Mesa Macías (Pau&Company) | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/76 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: What Does Your Tech Stack Say About You? A Live Security and Autonomy Diagnostic for Organisations | |
| Description: | |
| Your organisation’s tech stack – email provider, cloud services, communications tools, website setup – tells a story. But is it the story you want it to tell? | |
| In this Lab, we’ll expose how default tools and platforms quietly undermine autonomy, extract data, and leave users vulnerable even when they appear secure. Then, we’ll flip the script. Participants will explore how small shifts in infrastructure can align tech choices with values like privacy, safety and digital sovereignty. | |
| **What you’ll experience:** | |
| - A live teardown of “typical” organisational tech setups (no need to share your own) | |
| - A walkthrough of what a real audit looks like, from security gaps to ethical red flags | |
| - Case studies showing how organisations have moved towards transparent, secure and autonomous tools without sacrificing usability | |
| - A guided diagnostic worksheet to reflect on your own organisation’s digital risks and possibilities | |
| Whether you’re a non-profit, cooperative, campaign group or small business, this session will help you: | |
| - Understand where your digital infrastructure reinforces extractive defaults | |
| - Visualise what a safer, values-aligned stack could look like | |
| - Ask smarter questions when hiring tech support or choosing platforms | |
| This session is accessible to non-technical participants but led by a technical expert with experience rebuilding infrastructure for privacy, cybersecurity and sustainability. You’ll leave with a concrete reflection tool to take back to your team. | |
| **Perfect for anyone responsible for digital tools but unsure where to begin making them safer.** | |
| *Come curious. Leave equipped and inspired to rebuild your digital house on stronger ground.*</description></item><item><title>Unmasking Data Disasters - Is your data really anonymous?</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/95</link><guid isPermaLink="false">95</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 95 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unmasking Data Disasters - Is your data really anonymous? | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Craig Steele; Daniel Devine | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/95 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unmasking Data Disasters - Is your data really anonymous? | |
| Description: | |
| **Join us for an interactive challenge - to unmask personal data from a supposedly anonymised dataset.** | |
| We need to prepare the next generation of digital leaders to understand the dangers of improperly collected and stored data. | |
| Young people care deeply about privacy, and making informed choices with their data. | |
| We have produced an interactice hands-on resource all about how difficult it is to properly anonymise personal data, and how big companies have tried, and failed, to prevent re-identification in datasets they've released. | |
| Join us to become a data detective, and learn about our approach to teaching technology ethics. | |
| Ideal for anyone working in schools, colleges, universities, community groups, and informal learning spaces. | |
| **Can you discover a data disaster waiting to happen?**</description></item><item><title>Designing from the Edge: Disability & Neurodivergence as the Future of Tech</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/274</link><guid isPermaLink="false">274</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 274 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Designing from the Edge: Disability & Neurodivergence as the Future of Tech | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Abigail Leung | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/274 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Designing from the Edge: Disability & Neurodivergence as the Future of Tech | |
| Description: | |
| Mainstream tech continues to center a narrow, ableist view of the “user”, one that ignores the rich, complex realities of disabled lives. But disability and neurodivergence are not niche, edge cases, it is a vital and generative perspective on how technology should work for everyone. | |
| Disabled people have long led the way in creative, community-based, solutions to inaccessible systems – from hacking infrastructure to building tools that prioritize care, consent and collective access. When disabled perspectives lead, the results are more innovative, more human, more just. | |
| This conversation will bring together disabled and neurodivergent leaders who are imagining tech from the ground up. Panelists will share how they are disrupting ableist systems and reimagining access, aesthetics and functionality in each of their fields. | |
| Moderator: Carlos Salinas, NMV/NRV Investment Associate | |
| NMV/NRV Potential Panelists: Jess Moore Matthews (Backbone Digital), Dom Kelly (New Disabled South), Avriel Epps (AI4Abolition) (to be confirmed after pane acceptance)</description></item><item><title>The neighborhood server</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/47</link><guid isPermaLink="false">47</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 47 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The neighborhood server | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: bruno caldas vianna; Lucas García | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/47 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The neighborhood server | |
| Description: | |
| In this session, we describe the initiative of our group of neighbors in Barcelona to provide on-line services to the *barri*. By recycling 3 desktop computers and placing them in the community center, we've created a local cloud that gives support to several initiatives such as the Cultural Market, the Consumer Cooperative, as well as neighborhood Luanti world (the minecraft open clone) and a digital library. | |
| The main goal of the forum, though, is not as much to talk about our experience, but to gather similar initiatives from around the city and the world. Maintaining services for the community is not as much as technical challenge but a social one. How do we convince people to switch from google drive to our own self-hosted cloud? How do we communicate the importance of keeping our data under our control, and to run our modest processors instead of surrendering them to water hungry datacenters? | |
| To discuss this, we will invite connected projects from Barcelona, and we hope other participants in the Mozilla Festival can also contribute with the experiences and insights.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Financial Repression: Bitcoin for Civil Society</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/161</link><guid isPermaLink="false">161</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 161 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Financial Repression: Bitcoin for Civil Society | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ahmed_G | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/161 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Financial Repression: Bitcoin for Civil Society | |
| Description: | |
| For much of the world, the global financial system doesn’t offer access - it enforces control. | |
| In repressive regimes, financial systems are often weaponized to silence dissent, choke off civil society, and isolate activists. Bank accounts are frozen. Foreign funding is criminalized. Currency collapses overnight. International platforms de-risk entire populations. For those on the front lines of human rights, journalism, and grassroots organizing, financial repression is a daily, existential threat. | |
| This talk explores how activists and nonprofits across the MENA region and beyond are turning to Bitcoin as resistance infrastructure. Drawing on fieldwork and trainings by the Kawaakibi Foundation, we’ll unpack how decentralized tools are enabling civil society actors to receive donations, pay teams, and survive under financial siege. We’ll also confront the limitations, risks, and myths around crypto—while spotlighting the radical promise it holds when wielded not for speculation, but for liberation. | |
| Participants will leave with new insight into how money shapes power, how financial access is a human rights issue, and what it means to unlearn economic dependence in favor of autonomy.</description></item><item><title>How Organizational Culture Can Rewire the Digital Workplace</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/155</link><guid isPermaLink="false">155</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 155 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: How Organizational Culture Can Rewire the Digital Workplace | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Marwa Abayed; Gillian Williams | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/155 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: How Organizational Culture Can Rewire the Digital Workplace | |
| Description: | |
| Preview: | |
| What if your workspace’s default settings are duplicating the very systems you’re working to dismantle? | |
| This talk disrupts prevailing stories of leadership, performance, and care, proposing tangible tools for rewiring organizations. Both the internal work and the external work of any healthy organization have to match - they are two sides of the same coin. This takes unlearning a lot of the inherited structures and practices and cultural norms that can inhibit the growth that comes when these two sides are working together in alignment. | |
| Session Description: | |
| How can we rethink our own internal organizational cultures to confront and break apart the very systems we work to change out in the world? In this session, we examine the mechanisms that we can use to resist the inherited narrative and share the process of designing organizational structures (frequently invisible and unevenly shaped by colonial legacies, patriarchy, and global north dominance) that work against systemic inequities within digital work spaces. | |
| Organizational culture is never neutral, it encodes values, hierarchies, and norms, often without clear consent. We will question the “default settings” that structure organizational life through retroactive honesty, we will reflect on our own organizational missteps on our journey of unlearning, on moments when we didn’t notice bias or the power structures ridden frames of reference, and what we have learned in the aftermath. Radical honesty isn’t just healing; it’s a political act. | |
| We’ll discuss tangible tools we’ve used to build equity and wellness within our team like our values-aligned budgeting processes, our growth and support framework that challenges punitive performance metrics, anticapitalist compensation framework, and how internal language justice practices have shaped not only our communication but our culture. | |
| At the heart of this is recentering values in organization design and unlearning systems that we may be unknowingly replicating, even if we are activists in spaces for equity and social justice. This is for anyone who is trying to rewire their organization’s DNA and find joy in building and breaking and rebuilding!</description></item><item><title>Ship Fast or Build to Last? Reframe MVP Culture with Cookies</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/252</link><guid isPermaLink="false">252</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 252 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ship Fast or Build to Last? Reframe MVP Culture with Cookies | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Bhavya Madan; Ali Latorre | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/252 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ship Fast or Build to Last? Reframe MVP Culture with Cookies | |
| Description: | |
| Whether it is building a new platform from scratch, launching a new feature, or troubleshooting issues, speed often wins out over sustainability for technology-aligned teams. We default to Minimum Viable Products (MVPs), creative workarounds, and quick fixes to meet deadlines. But what starts as a short-term solution can turn into long-term friction, technical debt, or systems that don't scale. | |
| This session is grounded in real-world tech implementation, but this is accessible to anyone who has ever tried to build something sustainable under pressure. Whether you work in technology, community building, events management, or organizational change, you'll relate to the tension between "just ship it" and "make it last" as we visualize and reframe your approach to scaling what you build. | |
| In this hands-on, cookie decorating lab, we will explore how to unlearn default design habits that favour speed at the cost of thoughtful implementation or true intention. You will decorate two cookies: | |
| - One representing an MVP cookie, built quickly under constraints. | |
| - One Scaled with Care cookie, designed with intention, inclusion, and long-term impact in mind. | |
| Using cookies as metaphors, we will reimagine how teams build systems that rise with people and not just timelines. | |
| By the end of the session, participants will: | |
| - Reflect on trade-offs between speed and sustainability in their work | |
| - Reframe MVPs as a first step, not a final solution | |
| - Leave with a metaphorical (and edible!) "recipe" for scaling with care | |
| No baking or tech experience required! Just curiosity, creativity, and a willingness to decorate your way to better design. | |
| Let’s unlearn the habit of rushing to build, and instead, bake something that lasts.</description></item><item><title>Hear to Heal: Polyrhythms as Ethical Data</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/82</link><guid isPermaLink="false">82</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 82 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Hear to Heal: Polyrhythms as Ethical Data | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Imani C. Mkandawire | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/82 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Hear to Heal: Polyrhythms as Ethical Data | |
| Description: | |
| **Unlearn rhythm as a noun; learn it as care.** | |
| Polyrhythms for wellness builds a community-governed database of African and African-inspired polyrhythms and a suite of models that test rhythm-based effects on attention, emotion regulation, and cognitive remediation. Grounded in African and diasporic practices—where layered rhythms have long supported self-transcendent experience, communal coordination, and wellness—we formalize rhythm as both structured signal and situated knowledge for hypothesis-driven study. To avoid extractive use, we record cultural provenance, apply consent tiers, and prioritize co-authorship and benefit-sharing. | |
| Polyrhythms—the simultaneous layering of distinct pulse streams—engage attentional and sensorimotor systems and are implicated in neuroplasticity, cognitive therapy, and motor learning (e.g., Lakatos & Thut 2019; Helfrich et al. 2018; Nam & Kwon 2025). Although traditions such as Vimbuza, Ring Shout, and Batá use rhythm and gesture as vehicles for communication, healing, and mental clarity, there is limited culturally situated, clinically oriented data. We address that gap with a function-first approach to labeling and modeling. | |
| Participants will do guided listening to synthesized MIDI percussion (no raw cultural recordings), then co-author a function-first schema—e.g., “focus activator,” “grief container,” “revival pacer”—attaching setting and consent rules to each pattern. We collect self-reports, symbolic sketches, and consent preferences to shape an IRB-ready study and a future traveling installation.</description></item><item><title>Youth-led digital governance: turning utopia into reality through collective action</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/131</link><guid isPermaLink="false">131</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 131 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Youth-led digital governance: turning utopia into reality through collective action | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Luísa Franco Machado; Lorna; Rita Costa Cots; Uma Kalkar | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/131 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Youth-led digital governance: turning utopia into reality through collective action | |
| Description: | |
| If you believe that transformation can only happen with collective action, this session is for you. Young people are the most digitally connected age group worldwide, but concerns over data justice and digital rights do not seem to be evolving as fast as the evolution of data generation, collection and treatment from the same group. The unmindful adoption AI-centric systems has provoked the emergence of an algorithmic type of governance that does not fully assess the potential risks caused by such practices. To fight inequalities and power imbalances, youth, women, the LGBTQIA+ community and other minorities should be at the forefront of internet governance. | |
| Most of us, young people, are unwired in the digital space when it comes to activism. We often engage with political content on social media and closely follow those few figures who manage to grab our attention in topics like digital rights, data privacy, or regulation. How can we leverage our shared values and common interests to push the issues that matter to us? How can we get a (permanent) seat at decision-making tables? These are some of the questions guiding this lab by EquiLabs, a youth-led digital rights lab centering equity and justice in AI and data systems. | |
| This session aims to merge the efforts of young leaders to envisage the most effective ways to build feminist techno-political frameworks for human rights-based development, deployment and usages of technologies. By the end of the session we aspire to see come to surface a small seed of a youth-led horizontal initiative advocating for a rights-based internet governance. | |
| We invite folks of all backgrounds and ages to join. This seems like an important opportunity to learn from experienced activists of all sorts lessons for collective action through a co-creation process that center's young people's interests. We will implement collective action tools and techniques to maintain an organized lab-debate for all.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Certainty: Quantum Futurism</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2094</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2094</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2094 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Certainty: Quantum Futurism | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ziyaad Bhorat; William Zeng; Scott Oshiro; Victoria Kumaran | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2094 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Certainty: Quantum Futurism | |
| Description: | |
| Quantum technology thrives in uncertainty, probability, and entanglement. This session unveils Mozilla Foundation’s new investments in the quantum open source ecosystem through live demos and creative perspectives. Festival-goers will encounter a live music performance by Scott Oshiro, a Doris Duke Foundation Performing Arts Technologies Lab awardee. They will also see how communities can experiment with accessible quantum sensing through Quantum Village’s open-source hardware, and hear Victoria Kumaran reflect on building participation in this space. Will Zeng, who leads the Unitary Foundation and is one of the world’s foremost voices in quantum technology, will share how openness and responsibility can guide the field’s future. Attendees will come away with a vivid sense of quantum’s cultural and technical horizons, and how imagination can guide the field from its earliest stages.</description></item><item><title>LaSuite: open source digital workspace</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2136</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2136</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2136 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: LaSuite: open source digital workspace | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Virgile Deville | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2136 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: LaSuite: open source digital workspace | |
| Description: | |
| Discover La Suite Numérique, the French government’s open-source digital workspace designed to empower civil servants and public sector professionals. Built by DINUM (Direction Interministérielle du Numérique), this sovereign, interoperable suite offers a range of collaborative tools—from instant messaging to document editing—all underpinned by open-source principles and the highest security standards. | |
| At this booth, you’ll learn how La Suite Numérique is breaking vendor lock-in, fostering digital sovereignty, and enabling seamless collaboration across public administrations. Explore its modular architecture, integration with ProConnect for secure authentication, and how it supports both national and European interoperability. Whether you’re a developer, public sector IT professional, or open-source enthusiast, join us to see how La Suite is redefining digital workspaces for the public good.</description></item><item><title>Who Gets to Tell the Truth? Journalism, Activism, and Platform Power</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/158</link><guid isPermaLink="false">158</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 158 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Who Gets to Tell the Truth? Journalism, Activism, and Platform Power | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Valeriia Voshchevska; Kassy Cho | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/158 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Who Gets to Tell the Truth? Journalism, Activism, and Platform Power | |
| Description: | |
| In a world of takedowns, shadowbans, and algorithmic silence, telling the truth online isn’t just risky — it’s political. We bring together three very different storytellers — an independent journalist building youth-led media, a Ukrainian activist navigating viral advocacy in a war zone, and a creator navigating platform power and institutional change through storytelling and strategy — to ask: | |
| Who gets to be believed? Who gets punished for caring too much? And who made those rules? | |
| We’ll unpack how platforms and institutions decide what’s “credible,” what’s “neutral,” and what’s “too emotional” — and why those decisions reflect power more than truth. | |
| Our speakers have been flagged, banned, and pushed to the margins — not because they were wrong, but because they were clear. From censorship and conflict zones to meme culture and movement strategy, this panel explores how we reclaim truth-telling on our own terms — outside the systems that were never built to include us. | |
| Kassy Cho is the founder of Almost, a bilingual youth-led media outlet reshaping how global news is told. Known for her emotionally resonant, social-first storytelling, she’s built a media platform trusted by young people worldwide — and too honest for platform algorithms. | |
| Valeriia Voshchevska is a Ukrainian activist, strategist, and digital storyteller. From frontline campaigns to viral content, she navigates the tension between visibility and vulnerability — building global solidarity through personal truth. | |
| Jamira Burley is a movement strategist and digital creator whose work spans grassroots activism, corporate accountability, and systems change. A former Amnesty campaigner and TikTok ban survivor, Jamira brings both inside knowledge and radical clarity to questions of platform power and digital justice. | |
| Track: Unlearning Power in Tech Governance.</description></item><item><title>Alternative Platforms Booth: Decidim</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2135</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2135</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2135 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Alternative Platforms Booth: Decidim | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nil Homedes; Carolina Romero Cruz; Elsa Boloix | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2135 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Alternative Platforms Booth: Decidim | |
| Description: | |
| [Decidim](https://decidim.org/) is an open-source, open-code public digital infrastructure for participatory democracy created by Barcelona City Council in 2017. The project is supported by a global, dynamic community that collaboratively develops the software. This techno-political project promotes the technological sovereignty of the governments that adopt it, while its design guarantees democratic quality to make participation processes more inclusive and accessible. | |
| The tool is intended for all types of administrations, including local, regional and national governments, associations, universities, NGOs and cooperatives, among others. Decidim is currently used in various institutional contexts: Barcelona City Council, the European Commission, the Government of Catalonia, the cities of Helsinki (Finland) and New York (USA), the Federal Government of Brazil and the French National Assembly are just some examples of the more than 500 success stories.</description></item><item><title>Exit the Bank: A Simulation of Financial Repression and Resistance</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/193</link><guid isPermaLink="false">193</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 193 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Exit the Bank: A Simulation of Financial Repression and Resistance | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ahmed_G | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/193 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Exit the Bank: A Simulation of Financial Repression and Resistance | |
| Description: | |
| What if the global financial system didn’t serve you, but silenced you? | |
| Exit the Bank is an immersive role-playing installation that drops participants into the shoes of an activist, journalist, or NGO worker operating under financial siege. In this world - mirroring daily reality for countless individuals in repressive regimes - bank accounts are frozen without warning. Foreign funding is outlawed. Inflation devours budgets. Donors hesitate, bureaucracies delay, and surveillance follows every transaction. | |
| As participants navigate the space, they encounter a sequence of real-world obstacles drawn from lived experiences across the Global South: blocked transfers, de-risked partners, corrupt intermediaries, disappearing liquidity, and the chilling isolation of being labelled “high-risk.” | |
| The installation also offers pathways of resistance. Visitors are introduced to decentralized financial tools, including privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies, that civil society actors are using now to move funds, pay staff, and preserve autonomy when the bank becomes a weapon. | |
| This installation reveals the invisible architecture of financial repression - and invites a radical reimagining of economic infrastructure, where access to funding is not a privilege, but a right.</description></item><item><title>Working Under Pressure: Upholding Free Expression, Digital Access, and Online Safety in a Time of Global Uncertainty</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/269</link><guid isPermaLink="false">269</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 269 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Working Under Pressure: Upholding Free Expression, Digital Access, and Online Safety in a Time of Global Uncertainty | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Lu Ortiz; Jillian York; Nighat Dad; Tabani Moyo; Rachael Kay; Alejandro Mayoral Banos | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/269 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Working Under Pressure: Upholding Free Expression, Digital Access, and Online Safety in a Time of Global Uncertainty | |
| Description: | |
| Around the world, people rely on digital spaces to share ideas, access information, and engage in civic life. Yet rising economic pressures, shifting political climates, and evolving technical threats are making it harder for individuals and communities to do so safely. Trust and safety professionals are now operating in an environment of diminishing resources and increasing complexity — where the digital harms are real, but the infrastructure of support is shrinking. | |
| This panel will present data and field-based insights from organizations working directly with individuals impacted by online threats to expression and access. Speakers will examine who is seeking help, what kinds of risks and violations they’re encountering, and where current systems are falling short. The discussion will also focus on the next layer of response: what effective, sustainable, and community-driven support can look like — especially when institutional trust is low and resources are constrained. | |
| Topics Explored: | |
| - Patterns in requests for help related to online safety, censorship, and access loss | |
| - Common characteristics of digital harm perpetrators and contexts | |
| - The role of platforms, policy shifts, and funding trends in shaping response | |
| - Emerging models of care, support and funding | |
| Participants: | |
| - Luisa Ortiz Pérez, Ed at Vita Activa, [email protected] (Host) | |
| - Nighat Dad, Digital Rights Foundation, [email protected] | |
| - Jillian York, Electronic Frontier Foundation, [email protected] | |
| - Tabani Moyo, MISA Zimbabwe, [email protected] | |
| - Alejandro Mayoral Baños, ED at Access Now, [email protected] | |
| - Rachael Kay, ED at IFEX, [email protected] (Discussant)</description></item><item><title>Algorithmic Dignity: Queer Voices Reclaim Tech</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/145</link><guid isPermaLink="false">145</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 145 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Algorithmic Dignity: Queer Voices Reclaim Tech | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Skyler Misbah Riley | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/145 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Algorithmic Dignity: Queer Voices Reclaim Tech | |
| Description: | |
| What does “power” look like when you’re queer, neurodivergent, racialized — and mediated by an algorithm? This forum creates a space for radically reimagining governance in AI systems from the margins. | |
| Drawing from lived experience, speculative thinking, and justice-centered frameworks, we will collectively unpack how dominant systems invisibilize non-normative identities and ways of being. Participants will share how surveillance, ranking, and moderation tools disproportionately impact queer and disabled lives — and together, we’ll explore alternatives grounded in dignity, interdependence, and community accountability. | |
| The session is not about critique alone — it’s about reclaiming agency. Participants will co-create a digital zine or manifesto draft titled “Rewriting the Rules of Digital Governance”, combining fragments of personal experience, design ideas, and calls to action. | |
| This is a forum for voices often left out of AI ethics: activists, artists, everyday users — not just engineers or academics. You are welcome as you are. | |
| No prior knowledge required — just the will to unlearn and reimagine.</description></item><item><title>Designing with Youth, Not for Them: Moving Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Tech</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/59</link><guid isPermaLink="false">59</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 59 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Designing with Youth, Not for Them: Moving Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Tech | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Katya Hancock; Josh Thompson | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/59 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Designing with Youth, Not for Them: Moving Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Tech | |
| Description: | |
| Too often, tech products aimed at young people are designed for them, not with them, reinforcing narrow assumptions about what young people want, need, and can contribute. As a result, digital spaces frequently work against, rather than for, young people’s wellbeing. But not all young people are struggling with tech. Many are finding ways to connect, create, and express themselves, often in spite of default design choices that fail to reflect their realities. | |
| This matters now more than ever. Gen Z and Gen Alpha make up one of the largest and most powerful blocks of tech users globally. They are not only shaping online culture, they are influencing the evolution of the platforms themselves. And with the rapid rise of AI, we face a critical window to shape how this transformative technology impacts a rising generation. Young people must be supported to navigate both the opportunities and risks of AI, and to develop the agency, fluency, and voice to help shape its future. | |
| This session will explore how default design practices continue to marginalize youth perspectives, and why centering diverse youth voices is essential to building more inclusive, empowering tech. It’s more than just about gaining the technical skills to build new tech, it’s also about developing a critical fluency of how tech intersects into a teen’s life. Our goal is not only to manage and minimize risks, but also to lean into the positives: supporting young people in shaping digital spaces, and AI tools, that foster meaningful connection, creativity, and agency, and helping them find their way in a tech future they help design. | |
| We’ll share insights from Young Futures’ Youth Listening Tour and from youth-led and youth-informed nonprofits that are charting new paths for healthier, more empowering digital experiences. We’ll also explore what it takes to move from tokenistic “youth input” to true youth co-creation, and how funding and scaling youth-developed solutions can shift the broader ecosystem.</description></item><item><title>Lessons from a decade of building whistleblower tech</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2082</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2082</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2082 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Lessons from a decade of building whistleblower tech | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Trevor Timm; Jen Helsby | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2082 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Lessons from a decade of building whistleblower tech | |
| Description: | |
| For more than a decade, we’ve helped dozens of major news outlets deploy SecureDrop, technology that allows journalists securely and anonymously communicate with sources and receive leaks. In this talk, we will discuss the unique challenges of building open-source tools that facilitate journalism in dangerous situations, the future of technology-enabled whistleblowing, and how you can help.</description></item><item><title>Awe as an Antidote to the Grid with Jason Silva</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2091</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2091</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2091 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Awe as an Antidote to the Grid with Jason Silva | |
| track: 11 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jason Silva | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2091 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "11", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Awe as an Antidote to the Grid with Jason Silva | |
| Description: | |
| What if the systems we live in: the city grids, the scrolling feeds, the mental maps we cling to, are the very structures we must unlearn to reclaim ourselves from the system? | |
| In this evocative keynote, Jason Silva invites us to reimagine unlearning not as loss, but as liberation. Blending keynote, cinematic storytelling, and visionary thought, Silva explores what happens when we step outside the algorithms and embrace the raw immediacy of awe. | |
| From ditching the car to move through cities by bicycle, to collapsing old cognitive patterns with psychedelic storytelling and AI-generated self-portraits of emotion, Silva uses himself as a test subject for unmapping the self. This is a journey through the “geometry of insight,” where unexpected collisions spark healing, and expressive rebellion becomes a survival tool. | |
| Part manifesto, part inner expedition, this keynote is an invitation to shed inherited assumptions, reclaim wonder, and design a more intimate, more humane future.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Systems</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/74</link><guid isPermaLink="false">74</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 74 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Systems | |
| track: 11 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Keoni Mahelona; Luísa Franco Machado | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/74 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "11", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Systems | |
| Description: | |
| This debate explores the transformative potential of unlearning dominant ways of knowing and organizing, specifically through the lens of Indigenous knowledge and alternative economic systems. As modern society grapples with environmental crises, social inequities, and unsustainable economic growth, we will question whether Indigenous wisdom—rooted in a deep connection to the land, community, and ecological balance—can offer vital insights for reimagining our relationship with the world.</description></item><item><title>Public Interest Benchmarks for AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/73</link><guid isPermaLink="false">73</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 73 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Public Interest Benchmarks for AI | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: B Cavello; Eleanor; David Huu Pham; Heila; Amy Schenk | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/73 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Public Interest Benchmarks for AI | |
| Description: | |
| Metrics and leaderboards play an important role in evaluating the performance of and driving research investment into AI models. However, it could be said that many of the popular benchmarks (eg score on a 12th-grade standardized science test) may have been chosen somewhat arbitrarily and were not designed to promote positive impacts on society. Simultaneously, examinations of AI conducted in the public interest are often shaped around reducing harm rather than promoting positive outcomes. There are important opportunities to incentivize the development of public interest AI by creating a set of thoughtful benchmarks for model and product comparisons that center public good. | |
| In this session, we hope to source a wide range of creative benchmark ideas. The goal of this session is to be generative and collate as many potential measures and tests related to positive social impact from AI as possible. | |
| We’ll begin with a facilitated roundtable discussion of gaps and opportunities in the current AI capabilities landscape. The participants will then break out into smaller discussion groups to discuss specific gaps and propose potential benchmarks that could help promote development toward public interest AI goals. The session will end with a report-back to the whole group on highlights from the breakout sessions and discussion of next steps. As followup, our team will distill and organize the findings into a public-facing resource to inform further benchmark and policy development.</description></item><item><title>Without plants, there is no life: AI and environmental justice from Ossain orisha</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/115</link><guid isPermaLink="false">115</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 115 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Without plants, there is no life: AI and environmental justice from Ossain orisha | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Tais Oliveira | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/115 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Without plants, there is no life: AI and environmental justice from Ossain orisha | |
| Description: | |
| The infrastructure required to maintain AI systems consumes energy and water and generates a lot of waste, thus having a huge and unfair environmental impact on the planet. For each command with 20 to 50 questions in GPT Chat, half a liter of drinking water is consumed, and on average, the tool has 400 million weekly users. | |
| This session aims to discuss how the relationship between society and the environment, based on traditional communities of African origin in Brazil, can help us rethink AI to be less harmful to natural resources, especially from the orisha Ossain mythology. The orisha Ossain leads us to think about the planet's conditions, defends health and well-being, and teaches us that there is no life without plants. | |
| Traditional African-based peoples in Brazil have basic foundations of organization, such as their origins, the notions of people, tradition, land and territory, identity, ancestry, seniority, orality, and community. In other words, they have different ways of doing, being, thinking, and relating to others and the environment beyond the relationship with the sacred (NETO, 2019). | |
| These basic foundations are supported by Federal Decree number 6,040/2007, which establishes the National Policy for Sustainable Development for Traditional Peoples and Communities, and which defines Traditional Peoples and Communities as culturally differentiated groups that recognize themselves as such, that have their own forms of social organization, that occupy and use territory and natural resources as a condition for their cultural, social, religious, ancestral and economic reproduction, using knowledge, innovations and practices generated and transmitted by tradition. The ancestral wisdom of communities of African origin in Brazil can contribute to other territories and realities. | |
| The session will seek to present the mythology of the orixá Ossain, the community premises, and the respect for nature of traditional communities of African origin in Brazil. Through interactive dynamics, it will encourage the audience to unlearn old harmful patterns and discuss other possible models of practical strategies to build an alternative technological future ethically.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Philanthropy: An Entrepreneurial Approach to Impact</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2107</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2107</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2107 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Philanthropy: An Entrepreneurial Approach to Impact | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Drew Petty; Rahim Fazal | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2107 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Philanthropy: An Entrepreneurial Approach to Impact | |
| Description: | |
| Philanthropy often measures success by dollars given or programs funded — but real impact is about outcomes that transform lives and communities. What would it look like to unlearn these legacy measures and bring a more entrepreneurial, results-driven mindset to social change? This session invites funders, nonprofits and changemakers alike to rethink how we define, measure and deliver lasting impact.</description></item><item><title>“Unlearning Digital Defaults: Feminist Research and Reimaginings of Tech and TFGBV”</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/42</link><guid isPermaLink="false">42</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 42 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: “Unlearning Digital Defaults: Feminist Research and Reimaginings of Tech and TFGBV” | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Diana Bichanga; Bárbara Paes | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/42 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: “Unlearning Digital Defaults: Feminist Research and Reimaginings of Tech and TFGBV” | |
| Description: | |
| An interactive session that invites participants to explore how TFGBV has become a pervasive default in digital spaces, mirroring and amplifying broader systems of oppression and how feminist research and practice are helping us unlearn these patterns and imagine radically different possibilities. | |
| Drawing on the Mozilla Festival’s theme of “Unlearning,” we will reflect on how TFGBV continues to be embedded in the very structures and design processes of our technologies. But rather than accepting this status quo, this session asks: What are the feminist strategies to tackle TFGBV, beyond the existing, default mechanisms? How can we shift power in the design and development of digital tools? What prevention strategies rooted in justice and care look like? | |
| We’ll begin with a brief framing, drawing from FIRN’s research across diverse contexts, highlighting work from partners such as Minas Programam (Brazil), our Egypt-based partner, and MariaLab (Brazil). A common thread we will explore is the diverse and intersectional forms of TFGBV, who is affected, how, and why feminist researchers are moving beyond surface-level fixes like content moderation or bias mitigation to develop deeper, context-responsive understandings of violence and power in the Global South, along with more nuanced and grounded recommendations. | |
| The conversation will center around strategies that aim to transform, not just tweak digital systems. For example, we will explore how participatory, feminist co-design practices are being used to develop datasets that support activist efforts (such as those documenting femicide), and what these approaches teach us about embedding justice and accountability into technological development. | |
| We don’t have all the answers, and we don’t aim to present a single solution. Instead, this session will be a collaborative space to discuss, imagine, and build prevention strategies together, centering feminist values, lived experiences, and collective action as we challenge the current defaults and dream toward more equitable digital futures.</description></item><item><title>Datávoros: auditing the apps that spy on you (and how to use them for good)</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/162</link><guid isPermaLink="false">162</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 162 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Datávoros: auditing the apps that spy on you (and how to use them for good) | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Paul Aguilar; Linda Fernandez | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/162 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Datávoros: auditing the apps that spy on you (and how to use them for good) | |
| Description: | |
| Do you know how many trackers are there in the apps you use every day? Why does a goverment app require access to your location 24/7? Why would you install stalkerware on your children? | |
| Datávoros is a project that investigates the voracious collection of data through mobile applications developed by governments and companies. We run tests and technical analyses to provide insights on the main security and privacy flaws in mobile applications. | |
| This session is designed for beginners interested in mobile apps auditing, digital privacy, transparency, and accountability. | |
| We will present the methodology used by Datávoros to analyze mobile applications, including network analysis, identification of permissions and trackers, and evaluation of security and privacy measures. Through concrete examples, we will show how analyses have been conducted on citizen security applications, applications for monitoring ,dating apps and parental control apps. | |
| In addition, we will discuss how the evidence generated by these analyses can be used by activists, journalists, and civil society organizations to demand better practices in personal data protection. | |
| We will invite participants to learn about, contribute to, and to provide feedback on our methodology.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning: AI & the Soul</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2077</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2077</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2077 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning: AI & the Soul | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Fallon; Paolo Benanti; Giuseppe Italiano; Rev. angel Kyodo williams; Ziyaad Bhorat | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2077 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning: AI & the Soul | |
| Description: | |
| What does it mean to be human in an era where machines claim agency? This panel explores how faith leaders can help societies reimagine technology’s role, grounding AI ethics in justice, safety, and human dignity. Drawing on diverse religious traditions, speakers will open space for plural visions of the future, and explore how religion can act as a freedom space by helping people dream, hope, and build a world where technology serves humanity.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Data Barriers: A New Framework for Access to High-Influence Public Platform Data</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/143</link><guid isPermaLink="false">143</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 143 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Data Barriers: A New Framework for Access to High-Influence Public Platform Data | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Peter Chapman; LK Seiling; Carlos Hernández-Echevarría; Brandi Geurkink | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/143 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Data Barriers: A New Framework for Access to High-Influence Public Platform Data | |
| Description: | |
| Given the central role that private technology platforms play in the dissemination of information, shaping our lives online and, increasingly, offline, understanding the nature of that information is essential to advancing the common good. | |
| Independent researchers, journalists, members of civil society, and the public all rely on access to platform data to understand and expose critical aspects of how information is produced and disseminated. While regulatory regimes – like the EU’s Digital Services Act – increasingly require digital platforms to make some data publicly available, there remains no clear agreement on what specific data should be made available, when, and in what form. | |
| This session will describe a new Framework for High-Influence Public Digital Platform Data, recently developed by a group of experts convened by the Knight-Georgetown Institute (https://kgi.georgetown.edu/expert-working-groups/publicly-available-platform-data-expert-working-group/). The outcome of this work is a framework for the minimum baseline of platform data that should be made publicly available, under what circumstances, from which platforms, and in what format. It focuses on access to public platform data as a means to enable interested parties to understand the relationships between online platforms and individuals, communities, and societies. The new framework seeks to support the emergence of uniform, cross-industry data access expectations that allow for understanding the online information ecosystem as a whole, not in platform-specific silos mediated by highly structured access opportunities. | |
| In addition to describing the new framework, we will focus on how diverse groups can leverage digital platform data – from climate advocates to public health experts. The session will help attendees find common ground through the need for clear access, transparency, and accountability from digital platforms. We see this as a unique bridging opportunity in a time of increasing polarization. We will also workshop with attendees different ways that they could pursue data access in their own work, focusing on specific practical applications.</description></item><item><title>Building Better Social: Lessons on (Re)Building Social from Mozilla Ventures’ Portfolio Companies</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/226</link><guid isPermaLink="false">226</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 226 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Building Better Social: Lessons on (Re)Building Social from Mozilla Ventures’ Portfolio Companies | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Tessa Brown; Adam Mullinax; Tony Haile; Jad Esber | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/226 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Building Better Social: Lessons on (Re)Building Social from Mozilla Ventures’ Portfolio Companies | |
| Description: | |
| In this panel, companies from Mozilla Ventures “Healthy Communities” thesis areas reflect on lessons learned in building social tooling around data sovereignty and trust and safety. | |
| Focus Areas: Consumer First, Data sovereignty, community & trust | |
| Portfolio Companies | |
| koodos (the creators of Shelf) | |
| Germ Network | |
| Filament | |
| Moderator: Adam Mullinax</description></item><item><title>Jandig - Brazilian Myths in Extended Reality</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/177</link><guid isPermaLink="false">177</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 177 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Jandig - Brazilian Myths in Extended Reality | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Pixel; Bruna Quevedo | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/177 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Jandig - Brazilian Myths in Extended Reality | |
| Description: | |
| The installation invites you to an immersive encounter with Brazil's vibrant folklore through Mixed Reality (MR). This installation allows participants to step directly into a living narrative, coming face-to-face with a captivating 3D animation of a traditional Brazilian mythological figure, such as the forest protector Curupira, the spirit Anhangá, or the mischievous Saci. | |
| Using a dedicated MR headset, you will seamlessly summon and interact with the chosen character as it materializes and inhabits your physical space. This experience offers a direct and intuitive way to engage with cultural heritage, blurring the lines between the digital and the symbolic, and showcasing a novel form of storytelling. | |
| This demonstration is powered by Jandig, a Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) platform currently evolving from Augmented Reality (AR) to MR capabilities. Brazilian Myths in Mixed Reality present these ancient stories with rich 3D visuals and sound, aiming to make such immersive encounters engaging and culturally resonant. | |
| More than just an artistic showcase, the installation represents a move towards creating accessible educational toolkits. The broader project aims to empower educators, artists, and the public to explore, remix, and craft MR narratives. This MVP for Mozilla Festival seeks to spark dialogue around FOSS for immersive technologies, cultural preservation in the digital age, and the future of interactive storytelling. We invite you to experience how ancient myths can be powerfully reimagined and shared through open and accessible MR.</description></item><item><title>Learn to Make Fun Of Tech: A Tech Satire Workshop</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/41</link><guid isPermaLink="false">41</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 41 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Learn to Make Fun Of Tech: A Tech Satire Workshop | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Louis Barclay | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/41 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Learn to Make Fun Of Tech: A Tech Satire Workshop | |
| Description: | |
| Plenty of brilliant people are doing the *serious* thinking about what’s wrong with tech. | |
| **This workshop is about bringing *fun* to the table.** | |
| Humor is a beautiful tool to mock the powerful, show people what's wrong with tech, and make us feel marginally less depressed about the world burning around us. So let's use it! | |
| ## In this workshop: | |
| - We'll come up with ten themes (e.g. weirdos trying to live forever, or how we have zero control over our data), ten formats (fake startup, new tech law), and split into ten groups to create absurd satirical concepts/parodies using a given format and theme. | |
| - You'll receive guidance on how to make your satirical concept slap as much as possible. | |
| - We'll round up with lightning-fast presentations to the group about our new concepts, presenting them as straight-facedly as possible. | |
| - And there'll be an opportunity to keep the fun going afterwards — to turn your satire into something real that goes out into the big wide world. | |
| To put it simply — it'll be a big laugh! Bring a sense of humor, an appetite for fun, and your craziest ideas. | |
| ### Who am I? | |
| I'm [Louis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisbarclay/), a Senior Fellow at the Mozilla Foundation and the editor of new tech publication [Attention](https://attention.to) to *make tech fun again*. | |
| Attention's projects so far include: | |
| - The [Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers](https://alignmentalignment.ai/) — [featured by The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/776752/center-for-the-alignment-of-ai-alignment-centers) and reposted by [Timnit Gebru](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/timnit-gebru-7b3b407_alignmentalignmentai-activity-7372011804656578560-BD8q/), [Emily Bender](https://bsky.app/profile/emilymbender.bsky.social/post/3lykwphimbs2a) and 'godfather of AI' [Yann LeCun](https://x.com/ylecun/status/1966752561123266979). | |
| - Together with [Nitya Kuthiala](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitya-kuthiala/), [The Box](https://wearthebox.com) — the world's first anti-deepfake wearable. The Box was also [featured by The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/web/694583/be-yourself-is-not-recommended-for-most-people-take-a-look-at-our-other-avatars-before-deciding) and **has come to MozFest as an installation, [go try it out!](https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/270)**</description></item><item><title>Mapping Resistance Against Border Tech Violence</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/156</link><guid isPermaLink="false">156</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 156 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Mapping Resistance Against Border Tech Violence | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Coline Schupfer Galia; Matt Mahmoudi | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/156 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Mapping Resistance Against Border Tech Violence | |
| Description: | |
| Inspired by the stories of resistance in 'Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence' (Haymarket Books, 2024), this hands-on lab invites participants to become digital storytellers and mapmakers. We will begin with a rapid introduction to how surveillance, biometrics, and data-driven policing extend the logic of borders into everyday life. Participants will then work in small groups to share personal or community stories of encountering border technologies, whether at airports, in public services, or on the streets of their city. Using collaborative digital tools, we will transform these stories into a living map of resistance: marking sites of harm, acts of solidarity, and visions for abolition. A core aim of this lab is for participants to leave with a link to a living map and with a lexicon of resistance—a practical vocabulary of strategies, tactics, and creative interventions that can be drawn upon depending on context, actor, or dynamic.</description></item><item><title>Love as Political Practice: Black Networks of Care Against the Material and Immaterial Harms of Harmful Technologies</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/133</link><guid isPermaLink="false">133</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 133 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Love as Political Practice: Black Networks of Care Against the Material and Immaterial Harms of Harmful Technologies | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Gustavo Souza; Gabriela de Almeida Pereira | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/133 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Love as Political Practice: Black Networks of Care Against the Material and Immaterial Harms of Harmful Technologies | |
| Description: | |
| Technological systems often present themselves as clean, efficient, and immaterial—but their impacts are far from invisible. Behind every digital infrastructure are not only data centers that consume natural resources and exploit labor, but also narratives that erase memory, distort truth, and silence entire communities. For Black and marginalized populations, the harms caused by technology are not only environmental or economic—they are also symbolic, epistemic, and deeply collective. | |
| This forum invites reflection on the material and immaterial harms caused by harmful technologies, and on how love as a political practice can mobilize care, resistance, and collective community-building in response. | |
| We will begin with a 10-minute introduction presenting two Brazilian cases in which love emerges as a political strategy of confrontation: | |
| The work of the Marielle Franco Institute in combating disinformation and hate speech against Marielle Franco, a Black and LGBTQIA+ city councilor assassinated in 2018. Instead of responding with silence or mere antagonism, the Institute mobilizes memory, affection, and truth-telling as political acts—crafting counter-narratives rooted in dignity. | |
| The Black Network on Technology and Digital Rights, a collective of more than 70 Black activists and researchers from across Brazil, organized via Telegram. The network shares grants, scholarships, and opportunities, but also serves as a space to discuss algorithmic injustice, disinformation, the environmental impact of data centers, and the disproportionate effects of AI on Black and peripheral communities. This digital circle of care is a powerful example of love that shifts structures—grounded in radical commitment to safety and collective futures. | |
| After the introduction, participants will be invited to share experiences and strategies, co-creating a horizontal space of listening, exchange, and imagining more just futures. We will use collaborative whiteboards (e.g., Jamboard or Miro) to map stories and practices of care. | |
| In this forum, love is not seen as a romantic feeling but as a strategy for political action, a collective tool rooted in social and racial justice.</description></item><item><title>AI Create - Prompt Battle</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/163</link><guid isPermaLink="false">163</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 163 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI Create - Prompt Battle | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Adam Colyer | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/163 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI Create - Prompt Battle | |
| Description: | |
| Prompt Battle is a fast-paced, boxing-themed competition where top AI creators go head-to-head in a creative showdown. In each round, creators respond to image and film audience challenges using creative Gen AI platforms, showcasing how AI can revolutionise the way we create. | |
| The audience watches the evolution of the AI-generated outputs on-screen as the time ticks down making the process riveting. Hosted by a charismatic emcee and animated by the playful virtual host YAI, this session combines entertainment, innovation, and audience participation into one unforgettable experience. Expect sound effects, crowd voting via cheer volume, and a very special trophy for the lucky winner.</description></item><item><title>Designing for the Edges — Rethinking Clarity, Inclusion, and Meaning with SenseLayers</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2098</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2098</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2098 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Designing for the Edges — Rethinking Clarity, Inclusion, and Meaning with SenseLayers | |
| track: 13 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Sean Gilroy; Leena Haque | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2098 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "13", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Designing for the Edges — Rethinking Clarity, Inclusion, and Meaning with SenseLayers | |
| Description: | |
| What happens when traditionally designed digital content meets minds that don’t follow a straight line? How might we offer digital content that not only says the right thing, but feels right to those navigating it? | |
| Today’s best practice design methodologies are devised on the premise that clarity equals comprehension and that comprehension equals inclusion. But for neurodivergent users, those navigating trauma, multilingual audiences, or anyone facing unfamiliar systems, “clear” content can still feel alienating or inaccessible. Standard UX practices rarely account for emotional state, nonlinear thinking or the body-based experience of trust and understanding. | |
| As part of the BBC’s Inclusive Design team, we’ve been working on a research project called Neural Commons. It asks: what if we expanded our definition of accessibility beyond structure and readability toward feeling, resonance and interpretive trust? | |
| This forum session will explore how we might re-design digital systems that reflect emotional nuance, sensory perception, cognitive diversity and cultural plurality. | |
| At the centre of this inquiry is a tool we call SenseLayers: a framework for reimagining content through modes like narrative, sonic, visual, emotional and spatial forms. It helps reveal what gets lost when we assume clarity always equals comprehension and what kinds of access open up when we design with more dimensions of meaning. | |
| Together, we’ll explore: | |
| • Who is excluded by default communication norms? | |
| • What does “comprehension” really mean in a world of cognitive and cultural plurality? | |
| • How might multimodal design challenge the myth of neutral UX? | |
| • Can alternative forms of sense-making build deeper trust in public service content? | |
| We will surface real-world content challenges (such as civic instructions or health messages) and invite participants to reflect on how these could be approached differently not through redesign exercises, but through conversation about emotional tone, cultural framing, and cognitive access. | |
| Digital inclusion isn’t just technical, it’s interpretive. Standard accessibility frameworks often stop short of how content is felt, especially by those already marginalised. At MozFest, we will surface real-world challenges, to open a collaborative space to reimagine not just how we deliver information, but how we honour the diverse ways people make sense of and search for it.</description></item><item><title>Alternative Platforms Booth: Tito</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2134</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2134</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2134 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Alternative Platforms Booth: Tito | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Paul Campbell; Doc Parsons; Vicky Carmichae; Bill Horsman | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2134 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Alternative Platforms Booth: Tito | |
| Description: | |
| Team Tito is a Dublin-based company building thoughtful, reliable software for event organisers. Over the last decade, they've processed over $1 billion in ticket sales for events and conferences all around the world. | |
| Their classic product, <a href="https://ti.to/">Tito</a>, has built a reputation for being easy to set up while offering a powerful enough feature set to handle the largest and most complex event formats. As one organiser shared in a review: “It just works. No hassles... attendees love it too.” | |
| Building on that experience, the team is now developing IO to be the most flexible event registration platform in existence, allowing organisers to manage ticket sales and private RSVPs from a single app without compromising on branding. Every touchpoint can be customised, from emails and webpages to Wallet passes and domains. Organisers have full control of their guest list, with tools to sell tickets, send invites and reminders, and track responses. And fast, seamless QR check-in makes for the smoothest event day you've ever had. | |
| Team Tito is six people: Paul (CEO), Doc (COO), Vicky (Head of Product), and engineers Bill, Murray, and Cillian. Together, they combine deep technical expertise with a values-driven approach to craft event technology that’s both powerful and responsible.</description></item><item><title>How Community Stewards Are Reviving Local Trust Online</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/120</link><guid isPermaLink="false">120</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 120 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: How Community Stewards Are Reviving Local Trust Online | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Trei Brundrett; Sam Liebeskind | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/120 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: How Community Stewards Are Reviving Local Trust Online | |
| Description: | |
| How local communities share information and build trust is essential to pluralism, democracy, and economic mobility. And while we see important mediums like newspapers and libraries dying, online forums like Facebook Groups and Nextdoor have stepped in to fill the void. In fact, half of US adults say they get their local news from these sources, even more than newspapers. Unfortunately, many of these groups are toxic, negative, and hard to navigate. | |
| Here at New_ Public, we have done a lot of research in the last year about what it requires to support healthy digital spaces for local communities; and it turns out that thoughtful, skilled, and appreciated “community stewards” are a key component. These stewards are often unsung heroes in their communities. They’re volunteers managing online neighborhood groups, newsletters, and boards. And we’ve has developed a number of insights about what it requires to care for these stewards and their online communities to fuel connections and social trust on- and offline. | |
| A lot of our work now is scaling what they’ve learned to other communities through a platform that can serve as a new vital American institution; a transformative space for local conversation and community that invests in people, practices, and platforms — not just tech. | |
| As a part of our presentation, we would spend the time speaking to this research and our insights, along with ways that we can make the internet local again; bringing people's attention to the places we are, inspiring a deeper sense of belonging, and ultimately creating healthy spaces online that help people thrive.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning the Web We Inherited: Meet GliaNet and the Net Fiduciaries™</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2106</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2106</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2106 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning the Web We Inherited: Meet GliaNet and the Net Fiduciaries™ | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Richard Whitt | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2106 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning the Web We Inherited: Meet GliaNet and the Net Fiduciaries™ | |
| Description: | |
| Description: | |
| GliaNet Alliance is a coalition of for profit companies and other organizations rejecting extractive digital norms and building systems rooted in accountability, care, and trust. | |
| At our exhibitor table, MozFest attendees can meet GliaNet staff and learn how our Community of Practice supports Net Fiduciaries™—companies and organizations that put human interests first. | |
| At our exhibitor table, attendees can explore how our members are challenging today’s harmful defaults—from manipulative AI to exploitative data practices—and replacing them with open governance frameworks aligned with fiduciary duties. We’ll showcase how the Net Fiduciaries™ model is already being applied by real-world companies. | |
| Learn about our NFIDS incubator, meet our team, and hear stories from across our Community of Practice. Let’s build a better Web together—one that puts people first. | |
| Goals: | |
| Introduce GliaNet’s mission, members, and values to the MozFest community | |
| Share early insights from our NFIDS incubator and alliance-wide initiatives | |
| Connect with builders, funders, and researchers aligned with trust-first digital innovation</description></item><item><title>Investigating data center development and engaging local communities</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/96</link><guid isPermaLink="false">96</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 96 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Investigating data center development and engaging local communities | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Joanna Kao; Pablo Jiménez Arandia; Justin Hendrix | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/96 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Investigating data center development and engaging local communities | |
| Description: | |
| Discussions around data centers and related infrastructure have accelerated this year as hype-driven investments in AI continue to require increasing computing power. However, many local communities most affected by these developments are often unaware of their real implications. In this session, journalists and researchers from civil society organisations will share their experiences investigating data centers and engaging local communities across Spain, Chile, Mexico, and the US. They will also share blueprints for measuring the environmental, economic, and community impacts of data centers to empower others to avoid common mistakes as they investigate AI infrastructure in their communities. | |
| Moderator: Justin Hendrix (Tech Policy Press) | |
| Panelists: Pablo Jiménez Arandia (Pulitzer Center), Tessa Pang (Lighthouse)</description></item><item><title>A Celebration of the Early Internet Party</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2139</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2139</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2139 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: A Celebration of the Early Internet Party | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mozilla Festival | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2139 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: A Celebration of the Early Internet Party | |
| Description: | |
| ## Kick off Saturday night at MozFest with an easy-going evening of music, good vibes, and time to mix with fellow festival-goers. | |
| ### Headliner: B Jones | |
| Fresh off DJ Mag’s Top 100 (#94), B Jones made history as the first Spanish artist to play Tomorrowland’s Main Stage, across three editions since 2022. With releases on Tomorrowland Music, Spinnin’, and Dim Mak—plus collabs with Steve Aoki, Alok and NERVO—she’s bringing big-festival energy to our dancefloor. | |
| ### Opening set: DJ Sarah Sadaka | |
| Human-rights technologist and DJ based in Brooklyn, New York, Sarah sets the tone with a genre-hopping, feel-good opener. | |
| ### Good to know | |
| Join us from 19:30. Bars and food trucks will be open all night to purchase food and beverages! | |
| See you on the floor! 💃🕺</description></item><item><title>Deliberating the Polarized</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/17</link><guid isPermaLink="false">17</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 17 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Deliberating the Polarized | |
| track: 89 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Caleb Gichuhi | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/17 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "89", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Deliberating the Polarized | |
| Description: | |
| Harmful technological systems threaten democracy in 2025 and have also done so in the past. Scholarship has shown that there is a relationship between social media and critical trends driving toxic polarization and populism. The collapse of truth due to disinformation and the rise of digital echo chambers due to the algorithmic sortition of content have empowered authoritarian leaders to undermine democratic institutions. This in turn has resulted in the growth of perception gaps as communities assume the worst of each other and lack opportunities, processes and tools to hear diverse views on public issues. Applying harmful technology systems to try and bring communities together towards deliberative democracy is no longer possible and in an effort to unlearn harmful technology systems, new commitments and innovations to support public deliberations are emerging in response to these trends. | |
| This session will showcase the findings and lessons from a digital deliberative program implemented in Sudan and Kenya using three deliberative technologies (Talk to the City, Polis, and Remesh) and offline engagement, highlighting how these new technologies are challenging authoritarian efforts to stifle public debate during conflict. By moving away from harmful technology systems that have been used in the past to try and engage the public, this session will compare how toxic the conversations are in these harmful system and how safe and inclusive they are in deliberative technologies. The participants shall also be taken through a deliberative process discussing a contentious issue using the one of the deliberative technology tools to fully grasp how they can be applied in a real world setting</description></item><item><title>Why Satire Is Important for Good Tech</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/254</link><guid isPermaLink="false">254</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 254 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Why Satire Is Important for Good Tech | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Bourree Lam; Ben Collins | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/254 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Why Satire Is Important for Good Tech | |
| Description: | |
| Sit down for serious laughs with Bourree Lam, Nothing Personal’s Executive Editor, and Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion. While many publishers are experimenting with AI-generated or AI-assisted content, The Onion is doubling down on human-written satire. Ben will discuss the outlet’s beautifully inefficient editorial process in creating America’s funniest news items. The Onion has revived its print edition and built a loyal subscriber base. He’ll also discuss why the work of The Onion is more important than ever in the landscape of corporate news.</description></item><item><title>From One‑Size‑Fits‑All to Risk‑Sized: A New Model for Online Safety Regulation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/61</link><guid isPermaLink="false">61</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 61 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: From One‑Size‑Fits‑All to Risk‑Sized: A New Model for Online Safety Regulation | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ujval Mohan; Rohit Kumar | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/61 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: From One‑Size‑Fits‑All to Risk‑Sized: A New Model for Online Safety Regulation | |
| Description: | |
| At The Quantum Hub (TQH), we have been working on a report on platform regulation and intermediary classification which re-imagines India’s online safety framework. Our report lays out the elements and a blueprint of an effective, proportionate and future-proof online safety framework for India. | |
| In 2022, TQH had launched a report proposing an intermediary classification framework for India. Over the past year, our team has been working towards a sequel report that visualizes what an optimal online safety framework should comprise of, given state capacity and other constraints, which includes a framework to identify systemic risks, and an updated classification framework for digital services. | |
| Recognizing the diverse roles of digital service providers, we propose a multi-tiered, risk-based classification framework. Our report builds on extensive research spanning 13 jurisdictions and features insights from 40+ consultations with a diverse set of stakeholders - ranging from small and large industry players, civil society organizations, trust and safety professionals, legal experts and regulators. The vast scope of research has allowed us to reflect the evolving nature of digital interactions - including the growing role of AI, federated governance structures, algorithmic curation and user-facilitated harms - and aims to offer a structured approach towards assessing duty of care in an evolving landscape. Our hope is that this revised classification framework can serve as an anchor for future discussions and advocacy on online safety and intermediary regulation. | |
| While the report is grounded in the Indian context, our comparative research across jurisdictions has surfaced broader insights on designing effective online safety frameworks. Drawing on this, we propose to host a session that explores emerging models of online safety regulation—looking at how frameworks can account for evolving technologies, systemic risks, and contextual realities such as political economy, socioeconomic factors, and global geopolitics. The session will aim to unpack key principles and design considerations for future-ready, proportionate regulation.</description></item><item><title>Digital inclusion for women, a Kiazi Bora project case study</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/58</link><guid isPermaLink="false">58</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 58 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Digital inclusion for women, a Kiazi Bora project case study | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Rahma Mkai | |
| start_at: | |
| end_at: | |
| timezone: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/58 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Digital inclusion for women, a Kiazi Bora project case study | |
| Description: | |
| SEE Africa's session will be based upon the Mozilla funded Kiazi Bora Project, we intend to focus our talk on the following: | |
| 1. Need for the project | |
| A. Importance of developing models based on community needs/baseline survey results | |
| B. Is your model user friendly for the intended beneficiaries? | |
| C. Does your model address other contributing factors that may hinder your intended users' access to your product? | |
| D. The importance of developing models that impact communities | |
| 2. The approach | |
| A. Increase communities' knowledge and awareness of your model | |
| B. Enabling communities' access to services offered by your model | |
| C. Increase communities' ability to put your model to use through capacity building | |
| 3. Response from the community and beneficiaries | |
| A. Importance of project/model inception meetings/events | |
| B. Reviewing your model based on community/user feedback | |
| C. Analyzing feedback data and information for improvement and model up scaling | |
| 4. Achievements, challenges, and learnings | |
| Attained during the Kiazi Bora project implementation period, the importance of project assessment and how learnings contributed into the development of the updated Kiazi Bora+ application. | |
| 5. Proposing ideas for future models being developed | |
| Our proposed presentation will stress on the importance of community engagement from the initial/induction phase, implementation and scaling up of the developed model. The focus will be to show the importance of involving and developing models that impact the community at all levels.</description></item><item><title>Synthetics Memories</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/199</link><guid isPermaLink="false">199</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 199 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Synthetics Memories | |
| track: 87 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Airí Dordas | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/199 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "87", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Synthetics Memories | |
| Description: | |
| Memories form the scaffold of our identities. | |
| Our installation for Mozilla Fest presents a collection of Synthetic Memories gathered through | |
| our work with the elderly, dementia patients, migrants, activists, and other marginalized | |
| communities. | |
| Through text and infographics, visitors will explore selected memory fragments and understand | |
| the methodology behind their creation. This display highlights the project's applications while | |
| celebrating the unique histories and identities of the individuals who have contributed to the | |
| project. | |
| Production & Materials: | |
| ● A4 prints (6 units) | |
| ● A3 prints (5 units) | |
| ● A2 prints (3 units) | |
| ● cm 50×70 prints (2 units) | |
| ● 1 screen 40-inch | |
| ● Black Vinyl for text</description></item><item><title>Who’s afraid of transparency? AI ethics, power, and the illusion of doing good</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/68</link><guid isPermaLink="false">68</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 68 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Who’s afraid of transparency? AI ethics, power, and the illusion of doing good | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Natalia Domagala | |
| start_at: | |
| end_at: | |
| timezone: | |
| location_venue: | |
| location_room: | |
| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/68 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Who’s afraid of transparency? AI ethics, power, and the illusion of doing good | |
| Description: | |
| In an era where AI is deeply embedded in everything from healthcare to policing to content moderation, calls for ‘ethical AI’ and ‘transparency’ are everywhere. But too often, these words are used as a shield - not a commitment. Ethics becomes a branding strategy. Transparency becomes a curated release of technical details, inaccessible to most and meaningful to few. Rather than shifting power, these efforts often reinforce it - keeping control in the hands of the same institutions that benefit from opacity. | |
| This forum will create space to question why genuine transparency in AI systems is so rare - and why it makes so many institutions uncomfortable. The session will explore how fear of scrutiny, loss of narrative control, and challenges to legitimacy drive resistance to open, accountable AI governance. Participants will collectively examine how ethics-washing plays out in the real world, from government algorithms to platform AI, and will be invited to share examples from their own work or experience. | |
| But this session isn’t about critique alone. It’s about imagining what we can do differently. Together, we’ll surface and build on emerging solutions - community-led audits, participatory data governance, public participation, policy innovations - that challenge existing power structures and offer tangible alternatives. Rather than centring the voices of companies or experts alone, this forum will focus on how people and communities can play a meaningful role in shaping AI governance that reflects public values and lived realities. | |
| Participants will leave with not only a sharper understanding of how ethics and transparency are often misused, but also with examples, strategies, and ideas for reclaiming governance from those who currently define it. The future of tech doesn’t belong to those who cling to old rules - it belongs to those willing to dismantle them.</description></item><item><title>Uncovering Algorithms: Conversations on the Impact of AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/185</link><guid isPermaLink="false">185</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 185 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Uncovering Algorithms: Conversations on the Impact of AI | |
| track: 25 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Natalia Domagala | |
| start_at: | |
| end_at: | |
| timezone: | |
| location_venue: | |
| location_room: | |
| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/185 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "25", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Uncovering Algorithms: Conversations on the Impact of AI | |
| Description: | |
| Uncovering Algorithms: Conversations on the Impact of AI is a forthcoming publication (edited by Natalia Domagala) that brings together candid, accessible interviews with leading global voices in AI ethics and data justice. At MozFest 2025, I propose a space that offers attendees a chance to explore the book in physical form - creating a quiet space for reflection on the political, social, and environmental implications of AI. | |
| The book - due out in summer 2025 - moves beyond academic framing and into deeply human narratives. It addresses the realities behind algorithmic systems: exploitation in data labour, the marginalisation of Indigenous knowledge systems, and the profound impact AI has on democracy, culture, and the climate. Featured contributors include Mozilla Rise25 awardees such as Julia Janssen, who explores data rights through artistic practice; Keoni Mahelona, a leader in data sovereignty in Aotearoa; and Manuel Sainsily, whose work pushes back against cultural erasure in AI development. Their insights, alongside those of researchers like Abeba Birhane, Milagros Miceli, Adrienne Williams, David Runciman, Gina Neff and others, form a rich, critical exploration of AI’s real-world impacts. | |
| As a Mozilla Rise25 awardee myself, and the former Head of Data and AI Ethics Policy at the UK Cabinet Office - where I led the development of one of the world’s first algorithmic transparency standards - this book reflects my ongoing commitment to challenging the dominant narratives of tech governance. | |
| Throughout the Festival, I will be present to speak with attendees about the themes of the book, share insights from the conversations, and invite reflections.</description></item><item><title>From Mines to Machines: Mapping the Material Reality of AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/170</link><guid isPermaLink="false">170</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 170 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: From Mines to Machines: Mapping the Material Reality of AI | |
| track: 89 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Kambale Musavuli | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/170 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "89", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: From Mines to Machines: Mapping the Material Reality of AI | |
| Description: | |
| This interactive workshop invites participants to map the physical and human infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence, from cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to server farms in Europe and consumer devices around the world. Through a guided activity, we will collectively uncover the extractive logic embedded in AI development and challenge the dominant narratives that present digital systems as clean, immaterial, or neutral. | |
| Participants will engage with real-world data, testimonies from mining communities, and open-source tools to trace the AI supply chain. Using collaborative visual mapping and critical dialogue, we will explore how global tech depends on hidden labor, ecological harm, and resource extraction, especially from Africa and the Global South. | |
| The session will close with a co-creation exercise where participants envision just alternatives: what would AI look like if it centered environmental justice, worker dignity, and local sovereignty? This workshop is a space for unlearning, reimagining, and connecting activism, policy, and technology from below.</description></item><item><title>Moneyless Marketplace: Unlearning the Currency of Exchange</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/49</link><guid isPermaLink="false">49</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 49 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Moneyless Marketplace: Unlearning the Currency of Exchange | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Bloria Gordon, Nada Ahmed, Zahra Ahmed, | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/49 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Moneyless Marketplace: Unlearning the Currency of Exchange | |
| Description: | |
| Moneyless Marketplace invites MozFest participants to unlearn the assumption that money is the only way to assign value. This experiential pop-up market enables attendees to exchange goods, skills, and favors without using currency through barter, gifting, and time credits. Inspired by gift economies and time banks, the session challenges capitalist economic norms and explores alternative, community-centered economic models. | |
| The hybrid format includes a lively marketplace experience, a contextual talk on alternative economies, and a facilitated discussion where participants reflect on their experiences and co-create ideas for post-capitalist economies. The session welcomes a diverse range of attendees, including educators, technologists, artists, and activists, and encourages hands-on participation and open dialogue.</description></item><item><title>Reimagining content moderation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/19</link><guid isPermaLink="false">19</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 19 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Reimagining content moderation | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jillian York; Dia Kayyali | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/19 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Reimagining content moderation | |
| Description: | |
| In the wake of big tech’s capitulation to rising authoritarianism, this session will provide participants with an opportunity to brainstorm new ways of thinking about how civil society approaches advocacy around content moderation and trust and safety. Session leaders will share a brief, high level “101” about the history of these discussions, and then break into small groups to brainstorm new strategies, such as decentering mainstream social media platforms, challenging the dominance of US and European legislation and geopolitical influence, and decolonizing this corner of digital rights advocacy.</description></item><item><title>Digital Bharat: A multimedia art exhibition in photos, videos and an original game, SUPER ASHA.</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/172</link><guid isPermaLink="false">172</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 172 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Digital Bharat: A multimedia art exhibition in photos, videos and an original game, SUPER ASHA. | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Priya Goswami | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/172 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Digital Bharat: A multimedia art exhibition in photos, videos and an original game, SUPER ASHA. | |
| Description: | |
| ### What does it look like to build a game on a complex social phenomenon unfolding in the world's most populous nation? | |
| We are talking about ASHA workers, Accredited Social Health Activists who are India's door-to-door health activists and now digital India's health data retrievers. | |
| I bring stories from four Indian states, with four languages, to understand how digitalisation impacts the most vulnerable people in the Indian economy. For this, | |
| > 💠We've got a game to bring out 24 hours in the life of an ASHA to give a first-hand taste of what a day in her life looks like. | |
| >💠We've shot 72-81 photo stories of ASHA workers and daily wage labourers. | |
| >💠We've made two 2-3 mins documentary-style videos so that people can head over to the booth/LCD screen/iPad to listen to the stories of people, in their own words. | |
| ### What can the audience expect? | |
| All stories, including the game, are based on true stories happening in real time. In the three days in Barcelona, the audience can take a trip to India and learn what it is like in Digital India today, especially for the most vulnerable. | |
| **The audience can also play a game! and interact with me on how we gamified one of the most complex socio-economic phenomena unfolding in real-time in India, 1/7 of the world's population today.**</description></item><item><title>Inter-Data-Species: A lab for Cooperatives</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/196</link><guid isPermaLink="false">196</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 196 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Inter-Data-Species: A lab for Cooperatives | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: virbrussa | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/196 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Inter-Data-Species: A lab for Cooperatives | |
| Description: | |
| The proposal consists of a hybrid techno-artistic installation. This is due to its methodology, nature, and thematic issues. | |
| The event aims to generate new dialogues between Nature–Algorithms–Narratives–Governance Designs through unlearning practices as mentioned in MozFest 2025. | |
| These interrelationships are framed by key concepts such as “circuitos de memoria” (Rivera, 2010), “planetariedad” (Spivak), “kipu” as a cultural artifact, “corazonar” (Cusicanqui, 2018), “tecnologías multiespecie” (Peña, 2023), and many more which you can find in the resource repo tool curated for the installation call. | |
| This conceptual constellation aims to inspire, challenge, and enable different layers of the Latin American Data Cooperatives prototype. The latest understanding refers to inclusive cooperation, a community of data among global cities, infrastructure, and a community of practice. On this occasion, the installation that will be part of MozFest is co-curated by partner organizations involved in various stages of the project and/or collaborating in the promotion of international cooperation. | |
| They are: Gire México (Data Cycle Layer | Latin American Data Cooperatives); Network for Scientific, Cultural, and Technological Diplomacy (Nature Diplomacy Layer); Feminist Artificial Intelligence Research Network of Latin America and the Caribbean (ALyC) (Algorithms Layer); Mozilla Community (Cross-cutting)</description></item><item><title>What makes an AI agent 'safe'? A Global Conversation</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/263</link><guid isPermaLink="false">263</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 263 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: What makes an AI agent 'safe'? A Global Conversation | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Louise Aupetit | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/263 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: What makes an AI agent 'safe'? A Global Conversation | |
| Description: | |
| The rise of AI agents — from chatbots to autonomous systems — raises urgent questions: What does it mean to have a safe AI agent? How can companies and developers ensure that they have safe, reliable and ethical AI agents? | |
| In this talk, expert members of Women in AI will explore what it means to design safe, ethical, and responsible AI agents, particularly from the perspective of communities historically excluded from AI development. This involves establishing a common understanding of the technical and governance framework necessary for the adoption and spread of safe and responsible AI agents. | |
| Through structured discussions and interactive sessions, we aim to: | |
| - Define key evaluation frameworks and risk assessment methodologies for agentic AI systems. This includes aspects such as robustness, reliability, safety, ethics, added value, and cultural context. | |
| - Explore applications across various sectors and identify deployment challenges. We will understand how AI agents can promote innovation while ensuring safety measures are in place. | |
| - Establish a set of actionable next steps for the community, which may include potential working groups, research priorities, and areas for further standardization.</description></item><item><title>Encruzilhadas [Crossroads] of ancestral codes: art, AI and social media</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/38</link><guid isPermaLink="false">38</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 38 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Encruzilhadas [Crossroads] of ancestral codes: art, AI and social media | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Larissa Macêdo | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/38 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Encruzilhadas [Crossroads] of ancestral codes: art, AI and social media | |
| Description: | |
| This session explores how Black and Indigenous Brazilian artists act as critical agents in the hacking, remixing, and reprogramming of algorithmic systems through their artistic practices shared on social media. Positioned at the encruzilhadas [crossroads] of art, artificial intelligence, and networked platforms, the activity draws upon ancestral knowledge systems, non-Western counter-colonial perspectives, and creative resistance to examine how social media can be subverted and transformed. | |
| The focus will be in case studies and visual projects that confront the normative logics of algorithmic visibility and challenge the techno-colonial infrastructure of social media. From Exu (Afro-Brazilian orixá) and the encruzilhadas [crossroads] as a metaphor for code in this systems. | |
| Social media will be analyzed as the “boca do mundo” (mouth of the world), inspired by the figure of Exu Enugbarijó, to trace the ambivalences embedded in AI systems. The session will introduce three Afro-Brazilian experimental artistic communication procedures based on the notions of Exu Yangí, Òkòtó, and Enugbarijó. These are not only paths of resistance, but also sites of design and language reinvention that redefine the way we perceive and share artistic practices in digital networks. | |
| The objective of the activity is to invite participants to critically and symbolically explore the encruzilhadas [crossroads] between art, AI, and social media within their own cultural and digital experiences. The aim is to challenge and expand critical design and artistic practices within digital platforms by engaging with epistemologies that have been historically marginalized. | |
| By combining case studies, visual analysis, and a collective creative exercise, this session reflects on how Black and Indigenous artists disrupt algorithmic biases, opening space for ethical, aesthetic, and poetic intersections that reimagine the field of art and technology.</description></item><item><title>MozFest Library</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2111</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2111</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2111 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: MozFest Library | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2111 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: MozFest Library | |
| Description: | |
| Welcome to the Mozilla Festival Library! | |
| Discover a curated collection of books generously donated by Backstory Books, a beloved local bookstore here in Barcelona. You’ll also find works by some of our festival authors, along with a few favorite titles from the Mozilla team and our guests. | |
| Whether you’re here to dive into a good read or simply browse and unwind, we invite you to make yourself at home among the shelves. | |
| We just ask you to leave the books behind after you browse for others to enjoy!</description></item><item><title>The Elephant in the Room: Power, Participation, and Online Safety in the Age of AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/86</link><guid isPermaLink="false">86</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 86 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The Elephant in the Room: Power, Participation, and Online Safety in the Age of AI | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Maryama Elmi; Madhuri; Madhuri Rahman | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/86 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The Elephant in the Room: Power, Participation, and Online Safety in the Age of AI | |
| Description: | |
| The elephant parable tells the story of a group of blind individuals, each touching a different part of an elephant and mistaking it for something else. It is often used to illustrate how focusing on one part of a system can distort our understanding of the whole. In the context of AI governance, it illustrates the fragmentation that exists: developers, policymakers, platforms, and communities each engage with their own piece of the puzzle, often without a shared understanding of the broader system. | |
| However, this fragmentation is not an accident, it is structural. It benefits certain actors more than others, particularly those who hold the most power. In today’s AI landscape, a significant amount of that power sits with Big Tech platforms. These companies have not only been the drivers of AI innovation, but have also played a major role in shaping the dominant narratives around what AI is built for, what risks matter, and how harm is defined. | |
| When it comes to online safety in particular, this fragmentation carries especially serious consequences. The people and communities most impacted by harmful AI systems (i.e., through harassment, misrepresentation, or surveillance) are rarely part of shaping how the governance of AI systems work. Meanwhile, a dominant narrative that “technology is neutral” persists, framing harm as an unfortunate glitch rather than a predictable outcome of how algorithms are designed, deployed, and monetized. This makes it harder to hold anyone accountable, and even harder to build safer systems. | |
| Participatory AI governance is a model that offers an alternative way of approaching online safety. It is the idea that those most affected by AI systems should have a meaningful role in designing, building, and overseeing them. Not as an afterthought, but as co-creators with decision-making power. | |
| In the context of online safety, participatory AI governance invites us to ask questions like: 1) What would our digital spaces look like if safety was defined by the people most at risk? and 2) How can communities reclaim power in shaping the internet they use every day? | |
| In the spirit of participatory AI governance, session participants will co-create a shared set of Principles for a Better Internet, rooted in lived experience, care, and the insights surfaced throughout the session.</description></item><item><title>Encryption and Feminism: Reimagining Child Safety Without Surveillance</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/160</link><guid isPermaLink="false">160</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 160 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Encryption and Feminism: Reimagining Child Safety Without Surveillance | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ramma Shahid; Mallory Knodel; Audrey Hingle | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/160 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Encryption and Feminism: Reimagining Child Safety Without Surveillance | |
| Description: | |
| Too often, the public debate around encryption and child safety is framed as a zero-sum game. Privacy or protection, never both. This framing misunderstands the technology and also reinforces outdated power structures that position surveillance as the only way to protect children. In this session hosted by The Internet Exchange, feminist technologists and digital rights advocates including Mallory Knodel reframe encryption and child safety through a feminist lense. | |
| We’ll look at how encryption can be aligned with feminist values and explore how digital infrastructures can protect vulnerable communities without surveillance. The talk includes extended time for audience Q+A, in-session and audience polling questions. The talk will be curated and presented by Founder, Internet Exchange, technologist and human rights expert Mallory Knodel, Editor in Chief Audrey Hingle and myself.</description></item><item><title>“Audit Yourself" – A Cybersecurity Self-Check</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/89</link><guid isPermaLink="false">89</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 89 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: “Audit Yourself" – A Cybersecurity Self-Check | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Amine Zaafouri | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/89 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: “Audit Yourself" – A Cybersecurity Self-Check | |
| Description: | |
| How secure is your digital life .. really? | |
| In this hands-on lab, you’ll conduct a personal cybersecurity self-check. Guided by a real-world ISO 27001 auditor and QA specialist, you’ll explore the difference between what we think we’re doing to stay safe online, and what we’re actually doing. | |
| Through interactive checklists, reflection prompts, and small group exchanges, you’ll identify gaps in your own digital hygiene: password practices, online exposure, app permissions, and more. But this isn’t a guilt trip—it’s a chance to unlearn security theatre and reclaim agency. | |
| Rather than treating cybersecurity as a top-down, expert-only domain, we’ll reframe it as a personal, evolving, human act of care. You’ll leave with practical insights, a custom mini-audit template, and new ways to share this knowledge in your communities.</description></item><item><title>Executing a Public Interest Tech Research Agenda: Insights from Social Science</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/80</link><guid isPermaLink="false">80</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 80 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Executing a Public Interest Tech Research Agenda: Insights from Social Science | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Lauren Chambers | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/80 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Executing a Public Interest Tech Research Agenda: Insights from Social Science | |
| Description: | |
| As the tech oligarchy becomes more and more entrenched, public interest technologists nonetheless continue to innovate from outside the bounds of Big Tech. What new labor models, knowledge practices, and institutional tensions emerge when technologists choose to work in mission-driven civil society organizations? This session draws on my dissertation research as a PhD student in information science, embedded in the public interest technology (PIT) ecosystem. Through a multi-year, multi-method investigation - including ethnographic and organizational analysis - I have been investigating how technologists in U.S. advocacy nonprofits are reshaping the sociotechnical landscape. These “advocacy technologists” support campaigns on housing, immigration, reproductive justice, and more, deploying their skills in deeply political, resource-constrained, and ethically charged environments. But while their work is vital, it is also often precarious, misunderstood, and misaligned with dominant narratives about what counts as innovation. | |
| By centering the lived experiences and infrastructural labor of advocacy technologists, this talk surfaces key insights about how technology operates beyond profit-seeking. I show how these interdisciplinary workers act as translators and skeptics; how they contribute to meaningful change-making missions; and how the field of PIT itself is being co-produced through philanthropic structures, academic programs, and institutional norms. My work also explores the funding, pedagogy, and institutionalization of PIT, with the goal of helping participants understand not only what PIT looks like on the ground, but what it takes to sustain it. Together, we will reflect on how civil society is being called to do more with less in the tech space, and how technologists inside these organizations are innovating unique forms of tech expertise. The session invites researchers, funders, and practitioners to consider how we might rethink labor, pipelines, and infrastructure in building the future of tech for justice.</description></item><item><title>Turns Out Surveillance Capitalism Is Bad for Trees Too</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/24</link><guid isPermaLink="false">24</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 24 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Turns Out Surveillance Capitalism Is Bad for Trees Too | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Pranit Brahmbhatt | |
| start_at: | |
| end_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/24 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Turns Out Surveillance Capitalism Is Bad for Trees Too | |
| Description: | |
| We often think of the internet as a weightless web of data points that lives in "the cloud," distant and immaterial. Yet every click, AI prompt, and auto-backup has a tangible, physical cost. The internet relies on **energy-hungry infrastructure**, including data centers, servers, and resources through intensive computation that all contribute to rising global emissions. | |
| This session reveals the hidden environmental impact of our digital lives and shows how **privacy-first, local-first, and low-bandwidth technologies** benefit not just users but also the planet. | |
| We'll examine how surveillance capitalism's data hoarding practices harm the environment by leaving a massive carbon footprint behind, from AI model training to the carbon footprint of global data centers. More importantly, we'll explore practical, ethical alternatives like edge computing, local-first design, and data minimization that can guide us toward a sustainable and human-centered digital future. | |
| Topics include: | |
| - The environmental toll of AI, cloud infrastructure, and big data | |
| - How privacy-first principles naturally reduce energy usage | |
| - Case studies: local-first software demo using a project, lightweight apps, and zero-data tools | |
| - Frameworks for sustainable, privacy-aligned tech development | |
| This session welcomes anyone interested in the intersection of tech, sustainability, and digital rights. Audience will gain insights into how our everyday tools consume physical resources, and discover ways to build smarter, leaner, and more responsible systems that serve both users and the environment.</description></item><item><title>Imagining remedies for AI-induced harms in Europe: making laws work for people</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/110</link><guid isPermaLink="false">110</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 110 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Imagining remedies for AI-induced harms in Europe: making laws work for people | |
| track: 15 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Laura Lazaro Cabrera | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/110 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "15", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Imagining remedies for AI-induced harms in Europe: making laws work for people | |
| Description: | |
| Over the last few years, the EU has significantly expanded its digital rulebook, including by introducing world-first rules to regulate AI. The AI Act was intended to ensure fundamental rights and the public interest were upheld in the development and deployment of AI. However, despite the law’s efforts to promote accountability and transparency, it failed to provide effective remedies for individuals affected by AI-induced harms. Based on research conducted by the Centre for Democracy and Technology Europe on the limitations of the AI Act and the existing pathways for individuals to obtain redress for AI-fuelled harms, this session will seek to unpack ways forward to ensure that individuals are effectively provided with tools to enforce their rights, at a time where political pressure to deregulate in the name of innovation is at an all-time high. | |
| The session will start with a brief presentation outlining CDT Europe’s research findings on the current regulatory landscape’s accountability gaps and underexplored opportunities, and will subsequently open the floor for discussion to leverage participants’ insights as to effective approaches for individual and collective access to effective redress. It will take a cross-sectoral approach to identify potential for gaps to be addressed and action points for future advocacy.</description></item><item><title>Bringing responsible tech innovation to early-stage VC</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/108</link><guid isPermaLink="false">108</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 108 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Bringing responsible tech innovation to early-stage VC | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Dama Sathianathan | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/108 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Bringing responsible tech innovation to early-stage VC | |
| Description: | |
| Venture capitalists (VCs) have an outsized influence on shaping the future of tech. In recent years, VC-backed examples have come to the forefront about worker exploitation and generally, the societal risks and harms of such technologies, such as stories highlighting the hidden workforce that filtered violence and abuse out of chatGPT or the deepfakes used for large-scale disinformation campaigns. Addressing the potential negative consequences of technology and how it’s developed should become the norm for businesses at every stage before it’s too late. | |
| The nature of VC in private markets often assumes it’s an opaque industry, but with the rise of impact investing and shift towards sustainable business models, greater accountability and principled approaches to ‘do no harm’ are possible. However, the field to invest responsibly in innovation is fragmented and lacks broader civil society engagement, who often take charge in dismantling extractive and exploitative practices in this industry. | |
| This session is a forum for anyone to join to think of ways of collective action and organising that bring in varied perspectives and can bring much-needed transparency to the VC industry.</description></item><item><title>The AI Data Real Talk</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/256</link><guid isPermaLink="false">256</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 256 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The AI Data Real Talk | |
| track: 89 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: E.M. Lewis-Jong | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/256 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "89", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The AI Data Real Talk | |
| Description: | |
| Join us for a conversation on bringing **inclusive, representative data into AI** — exploring data sovereignty, openness, and equity. We’ll talk about actual case studies that represent those values and what it really takes to build datasets for fair, representative systems. A Mozilla Festival-style deep dive: bold, curious, and unapologetically honest. | |
| Moderator - EM Lewis-Jong | |
| Panelists: | |
| * Te Hiku Media | |
| * Common Crawl | |
| * University of South Africa | |
| * Meta | |
| * Mozilla Data Collective | |
| * Creative Commons</description></item><item><title>Alternative Platforms Showcase</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/182</link><guid isPermaLink="false">182</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 182 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Alternative Platforms Showcase | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Alexander Zimmerman | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/182 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Alternative Platforms Showcase | |
| Description: | |
| **[Placeholder text until we word-smith something better]** - This Installation will feature around 10 tools/platforms that challenge (either directly, or just by their existence) the current status quo - i.e. they will be Open Source, put human/natural world before profit/power, and generally align with Mozilla's values.</description></item><item><title>Data Doesn’t Fit in Spreadsheets</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/192</link><guid isPermaLink="false">192</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 192 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Data Doesn’t Fit in Spreadsheets | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jamile Santana | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/192 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Data Doesn’t Fit in Spreadsheets | |
| Description: | |
| What does it feel like to be reduced to a row in a spreadsheet? | |
| In this interactive forum, participants will become a “living database” — physically enacting how data categorizes, simplifies, and often erases the complexity of real lives. | |
| We’ll begin with a silent movement exercise: each person receives a random set of category labels (race, gender, education level, internet access, etc.) and is asked to position themselves in a grid on the floor. Through a series of regroupings and card-swaps, we’ll explore what happens when data doesn’t match lived experience. | |
| Participants will then reflect on how it felt to embody inaccurate data points or lose visibility within imposed categories. We’ll invite open discussion: What was missing? Which labels felt false or violent? Who got left out? | |
| To close, each person will propose a new data field — something they wish a system could know about them (e.g. “daily fears”, “joy triggers”, “community support”) — and contribute it to a collaborative wall imagining a new, more humane database. | |
| This session uses no screens, tools, or devices — just our bodies, stories, and shared imagination. It’s an invitation to unlearn the default logic of datafication and dream up relational, care-centered approaches to data and technology. | |
| This activity is ideal for people working with digital rights, governance, AI ethics, journalism, research, or activism who are rethinking how data impacts power and visibility.</description></item><item><title>Cybersecurity Isn’t Enough: Designing for Digital Resilience</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/150</link><guid isPermaLink="false">150</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 150 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Cybersecurity Isn’t Enough: Designing for Digital Resilience | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Tazin Khan | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/150 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Cybersecurity Isn’t Enough: Designing for Digital Resilience | |
| Description: | |
| In a world where 80% of cybersecurity breaches stem from human vulnerabilities—phishing, manipulation, and social engineering—our traditional frameworks are failing us. Built on Cold War logic and enterprise compliance, today’s cybersecurity systems are designed to protect infrastructure, not people. | |
| This talk presents a new paradigm: Digital Resilience. | |
| Drawing from original research and interviews with trauma-informed care specialists, cybersecurity leaders, educators, and gender justice advocates, I’ll introduce the Digital Resilience Framework (DRF)—a justice-centered, trauma-informed model rooted in the RISE pillars: Resilience, Inclusion, Safety, and Empowerment. | |
| This session will explore: | |
| Why awareness training rooted in fear, jargon, or shame doesn’t work | |
| How digital safety education can be emotionally resonant and culturally grounded | |
| What it means to co-create security with the people most harmed by digital systems—rather than designing for compliance | |
| From community workshops with immigrant parents to trauma-informed digital literacy for youth, I’ll share insights from Cyber Collective’s fieldwork and my thesis research on how we can build frameworks that are accessible, flexible, and human-first. | |
| The talk concludes with a facilitated discussion exploring practical strategies for designing safety training, awareness programs, and policy that center care over control—turning digital security into a site of healing, not just hardware defense. | |
| This session is for educators, designers, technologists, community organizers, and funders who want to reimagine what safety looks like in the digital age—and for whom.</description></item><item><title>“Influencing the pen”: what civil society can learn from the EU AI Act policymaking process</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/151</link><guid isPermaLink="false">151</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 151 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: “Influencing the pen”: what civil society can learn from the EU AI Act policymaking process | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Toni Lorente | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/151 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: “Influencing the pen”: what civil society can learn from the EU AI Act policymaking process | |
| Description: | |
| This session examines the drafting process for the EU AI Act’s Code of Practice as a use case to expose some of the structural imbalances in tech governance. In particular, this session will explore how fundamental rights protections—such as privacy, non-discrimination, and freedom of expression—were quietly downgraded from mandatory to optional risk categories to be assessed, as a result of the pressure from industry stakeholders. Drawing on several years of engagement in policy making and the lived experience of civil society participants in the co-regulatory process, we will unpack how policy capture operates in practice and what civil society organizations can do to intervene more effectively. Participants will gain concrete lessons about navigating and challenging hidden power dynamics and known problems in AI policy development.</description></item><item><title>Tor Network Health: building a safer and stronger anonymity network</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/154</link><guid isPermaLink="false">154</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 154 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Tor Network Health: building a safer and stronger anonymity network | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Georg Koppen; gus; Hiro | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/154 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Tor Network Health: building a safer and stronger anonymity network | |
| Description: | |
| Tor is an anonymity network consisting of relays run by thousands of volunteers worldwide aiming to give back privacy on the Internet. The network carries around 350 Gbit/s of traffic and helps between 2,000,000 and 8,000,000 users daily. | |
| Joining our community and running a Tor relay is easy which helps grow the network and improve its resilience and security. However, this low barrier to entry also makes it easier for malicious actors to attempt to exploit users. | |
| In this talk, we will explain how we have shifted from relying primarily on technical defenses to adopting a more holistic and sustainable approach—one that leverages the power of diverse communities, such as OSINT researchers and relay operators, who are invested in creating a safer experience on the Tor network. | |
| We will introduce the concept of network health, assess the current state of the Tor network, and highlight various ways the community can participate. The talk will also address key challenges, particularly around sustainability, decentralization, and building trust within the community—especially in light of potential misuse. In response, we will propose strategies to strengthen the network over the long term, with a focus on governance, outreach, and preserving its decentralized nature.</description></item><item><title>The Box: A Satirical Startup To Highlight Our Deepfake Dystopia</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/270</link><guid isPermaLink="false">270</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 270 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The Box: A Satirical Startup To Highlight Our Deepfake Dystopia | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Louis Barclay; Nitya Kuthiala; Nitya Kuthiala | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/270 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The Box: A Satirical Startup To Highlight Our Deepfake Dystopia | |
| Description: | |
| **🚀 It’s finally out: the world’s first anti-deepfake wearable.** | |
| 2025’s most-anticipated tech launch. | |
| It’s simple, it’s elegant, it’s versatile, and it's fortunately a complete joke. Phew. | |
| ### Come try The Box at MozFest! | |
| - Keep your face safe from unwanted photos | |
| - Choose an avatar to replace you in the real world | |
| - Experience analog AR for the first time | |
| Along the way, learn more about The Box's features and our pioneering founding team. | |
| ### About | |
| [The Box](https://wearthebox.com/), previously [featured by The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/web/694583/be-yourself-is-not-recommended-for-most-people-take-a-look-at-our-other-avatars-before-deciding), is a satirical, dystopian startup by [Nitya Kuthiala](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nitya-kuthiala/) and [Louis Barclay](https://www.linkedin.com/in/louisbarclay/), to show what could happen if we fail to stem the tide of adult deepfakes targeting women. | |
| We hope this absurd, appalling installation will first make you laugh, and then make you think. And then make you laugh again, and then make you think again. And finally, perform those two same actions in a recursive loop for the rest of your life.</description></item><item><title>Arenas of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Hype</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/184</link><guid isPermaLink="false">184</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 184 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Arenas of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Hype | |
| track: 87 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Sofia Mari; Hailey Hannigan | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/184 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "87", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Arenas of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Hype | |
| Description: | |
| Arenas of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Hype is a visual database on AGI hype discourse. The interactive web experience is based on statements by key AGI actors, tech leaders, journalists and academia on the socio-technical fiction of an artificial general intelligence. Using qualitative research methodologies the statements were categorized into six key dimensions of uncertainty. They are visually ordered within arenas, symbolic for the race towards AGI. Conceptual, temporal and existential arenas cluster definitions, collect predictions of AGI’s deployment and assess its risks and promises of prosperity revealing similar statements, contradictions and promises. The project challenges the validity and truthfulness of hype narratives in tech governance, such as uncertainty and inevitability, based on theory of ‘Deep Hype’ by Andreu Belsunces.</description></item><item><title>AI Wildlife Park Demo</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2112</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2112</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2112 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI Wildlife Park Demo | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Marc Walsh | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2112 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI Wildlife Park Demo | |
| Description: | |
| Step inside the AI Wildlife Park, an interactive Minecraft world where you can explore how technology learns and makes choices. Your mission: help fix the park’s feeding system so every animal gets the right food. | |
| You’ll test ideas, take photos, and collect clues to help the park run smoothly. As you play, you’ll see how computers learn from the information we give them — and how we can make that learning fair and smart. | |
| The AI Wildlife Park was created for a virtual edition of Mozilla Festival by Mozilla Foundation and Causeway Digital. The world was designed for learners aged 9 to 12 to explore how artificial intelligence works, how data shapes decisions, and how people can guide technology to do good things. It’s now available to all students with a Minecraft Education licence in the lesson library. At Mozilla Festival, everyone is invited to step in, play, and see the world through curious young eyes.</description></item><item><title>Invisible Housework: The Gendered Labour Behind “Seamless” Digital Services</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/125</link><guid isPermaLink="false">125</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 125 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Invisible Housework: The Gendered Labour Behind “Seamless” Digital Services | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Cyril Maury; Morgan Williams | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/125 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Invisible Housework: The Gendered Labour Behind “Seamless” Digital Services | |
| Description: | |
| Digital services appear effortless, but their proper use depends on an unpaid and invisible "care work": setting up accounts, curating passwords, managing accesses. | |
| The workload rises sharply whenever a product is designed for family use, with multiple accounts to manage (e.g. smart home device, family password manager, family content subscription accounts, kids/teens social network supervised account). As is often the case, the digital world is replicating the biases of the physical world. What appears to be neutral UX therefore perpetuates a structural bias that places cognitive and time costs on those who already shoulder most care work. | |
| Two ethnographic studies we have conducted, one with a leading password manager, and another for a company manufacturing smart home devices, showed that a disproportionate amount of that work is shouldered by women, echoing – and worsening – the hidden work (often called "second shift") they are doing for the household in the "physical" realm. | |
| Talk structure: | |
| 1. Insights from ethnographic studies | |
| Overview of case studies on the lifecycle of different digital products in the household, highlighting the amount of "undesirable" work needed to have them work properly, and how unequally that work is shared by the household | |
| 2. Consequences for product strategy | |
| Invisible labour is not just unfair; it creates product debt, thus eroding security, satisfaction, and retention. | |
| 3. Possible Solutions | |
| Examples of design interventions demonstrate how to redistribute the burden, e.g.: | |
| - Rely less on explicit "permissions" and more on shared cultural norms to ensure privacy | |
| - Explicit “maintainer” roles with shared accountability | |
| 4. Q&A and next steps | |
| Participants will leave with a diagnostic checklist, pattern library, and evidence to persuade stakeholders that equitable maintenance is not a gimmick but a durability feature.</description></item><item><title>Reclaiming Scale: Building Tech that Serves People and Values</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/235</link><guid isPermaLink="false">235</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 235 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Reclaiming Scale: Building Tech that Serves People and Values | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mohamed Nanabhay; Jess Rimington; Alix Dunn | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/235 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Reclaiming Scale: Building Tech that Serves People and Values | |
| Description: | |
| Today, big tech companies are everywhere; they establish the rules for people, businesses, and increasingly public services. Their original promise—to foster value creation and societal advancement—has been overshadowed by a relentless focus on extracting value. | |
| What has resulted is a digital age that’s exacerbated the flaws of traditional capitalism. Venture capital-driven startups and large tech giants often prioritize rapid growth, quick exits, and market domination. The emphasis on scaling at any cost leads to practices that extract value from local communities, undermine competition, and prioritize shareholder returns above all else. The result? A system that sacrifices long-term prosperity for short-term profit. | |
| Panelists | |
| - Mohamed Nanabhay, Managing Partner, Mozilla Ventures | |
| - Jess Rimington, Narrative Change Strategy & Implementation; + Campaign Co-Founder, Beloved Economies | |
| Attendees will leave with a better understanding of: | |
| Models and opportunities for large-scale practices that restore rather than deplete social, ecological, and economic resources, emphasizing a long-term view of prosperity that benefits all stakeholders; | |
| Practices that encourage businesses to see social problems as opportunities for growth and innovation; | |
| What alternative economies are and what frameworks already exist; | |
| How to implement change on an individual, organizational and societal level.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: heylogin</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/216</link><guid isPermaLink="false">216</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 216 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: heylogin | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Dr. Dominik Schürmann | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/216 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: heylogin | |
| Description: | |
| heylogin is the first passwordless password manager. Instead of remembering and typing a long master password, you simply confirm your login, using your smartphone, FIDO2 security key, Windows Hello, Touch ID, or even a smartwatch. This makes heylogin 2-factor secure by default. | |
| As a German company, we place a strong emphasis on data privacy. We are not only truly GDPR-compliant and ISO 27001-certified, but we also host our service exclusively on German servers and rely solely on European data processors. | |
| We’re proud to be a Mozilla Ventures portfolio company because we share their commitment to an open and accessible internet, their focus on privacy, trust, and human dignity, and their mission to shape technology that puts people first and strengthens the internet as a public good.</description></item><item><title>Resisting in Parallel: How communities build digital safety in hostile systems</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/106</link><guid isPermaLink="false">106</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 106 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Resisting in Parallel: How communities build digital safety in hostile systems | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Laura Vidal / Curious Shapes; Daria Cybulska | |
| start_at: | |
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| timezone: | |
| location_venue: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/106 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Resisting in Parallel: How communities build digital safety in hostile systems | |
| Description: | |
| What happens when the very tools meant to protect us become tools of control? | |
| From Latin America to Central Asia, digital technologies are essential for communities to stay connected, informed, and safe — but they are also weaponized by authoritarian regimes to surveil, intimidate, and silence dissent. | |
| This session draws on firsthand research, lived experience, and grassroots documentation to explore what digital repression looks like — and how communities push back. Repression doesn’t just monitor activists, journalists, and civil society groups. It reshapes the language they can use, the platforms they rely on, and even their sense of safety in exile. | |
| We’ll share: | |
| • How surveillance infrastructures — from spyware to drones to snitching apps — operate in ways both visible and invisible | |
| • How women, especially those in public roles, face gendered harassment, disinformation, and criminalization | |
| • How communities are developing counter-responses: hyperlocal news buses, VPN-based apps, mobile media trucks, secure WhatsApp networks, and silent coordination methods that keep them active under threat | |
| This is not a session of static case studies. It’s an invitation to examine what safety looks like when default protections don’t exist — or when the very idea of “protection” has been distorted. | |
| Participants will engage in a structured conversation where we’ll map shared patterns across regions and reflect on how communities adapt not only their tools, but also their strategies, language, and collective imagination. | |
| By connecting experiences from Latin America and Central Asia, we’ll explore how resilience can be: | |
| • Collective rather than individual | |
| • Informal rather than institutional | |
| • Narrated in silence as much as in speech | |
| This session offers a grounded, transregional perspective on digital repression — and highlights community-driven ways to make security possible even when nothing feels safe.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Traditional Maps</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2086</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2086</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2086 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Traditional Maps | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mick; Mario Del Prete | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2086 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Traditional Maps | |
| Description: | |
| Maps are powerful tools that shape how we understand the world. Traditional maps often prioritize borders, terrain, or infrastructure, while potentially obscuring the social, economic, or digital layers that influence people’s lives. This workshop invites participants to “unlearn” conventional mapping approaches and reimagine how maps can reveal new ways of seeing the world and global challenges. | |
| The session is presented by **[Giga](https://giga.global/)**, a joint initiative of UNICEF and ITU that aims to connect every school in the world to the Internet. To support our mission, we have built **[Giga Maps](https://maps.giga.global/)** - an open and live map of global schools and connectivity. Connectivity is more than infrastructure: it shapes access to information, opportunity, and choice. By visualizing where schools are connected—and where they are not—a map can become a powerful tool for advocacy and insights. When combined with other data layers such as climate, demographics, or economic indicators, maps can reveal deeper patterns of understanding and possibility. | |
| The first half of the workshop will focus on ideation. In small groups, participants will ask: what else could a map show if connectivity were the starting point? Could the “shape” of a map be reorganized around networks rather than borders? How might layering in social or environmental indicators change how we see a community? The exercise is about imagining new mapping logics rather than reproducing existing ones. | |
| The teams will then shift to rapid prototyping. Using pen and paper, open-source platforms, or AI-based tools, participants will sketch or build visual experiments. These prototypes might combine unexpected data sets, distort scale to emphasize overlooked issues, or invent alternative ways of depicting relationships. Each group will share back, sparking dialogue on how design choices reframe meaning. | |
| By the end, participants will have created “unlearned maps” that challenge assumptions about space, context, and connection. The workshop emphasizes visualization over analysis, offering an accessible, hands-on design thinking process. Maps, reimagined, become tools for storytelling, advocacy, and new perspectives on global challenges.</description></item><item><title>RAIO (Reverberacions d'Amor i Odi)</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/169</link><guid isPermaLink="false">169</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 169 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: RAIO (Reverberacions d'Amor i Odi) | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Azahara Cerezo and Quelic Berga | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/169 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: RAIO (Reverberacions d'Amor i Odi) | |
| Description: | |
| **RAIO** (Reverberacions d’Amor i Odi) — is a **collective diary of sensations, concerns, and reflections**. RAIO is not a space for debates based on direct and personal replies, nor for problem-solving, but rather an environment for emotional digestion and shared introspection. | |
| In coherence with its intent, RAIO reclaims and reimagines older, resilient technologies — in this case, mailing lists — as tools for collective care. Through this decentralized infrastructure, participants can subscribe, contribute messages, and access a growing public archive of shared thoughts and feelings by means of a mutable interface. Each sent message may be **reverberated** — echoed or transformed — by a human, a group of humans, or a bot, allowing for a more **expansive and poetic experience**. | |
| RAIO is activated at MozFest as an **installation** and **active interface**, with site-specific reverberations that take place during the festival. Rather than promoting engagement through visibility, metrics, or speed, RAIO invites slowness and resonance — values that often disappear in contemporary digital spaces. | |
| Aligned with the **Unlearning Default Design** track, the interface that displays messages and reverberations is mutable, queer, and intentionally changeable. It is not necessarily optimized for productivity, clarity, or efficiency — but for ambiguity, multiplicity, and emotional complexity. In this way, the project challenges mainstream application design logics and offers an invitation to reimagine how digital systems can hold space for vulnerability and collective presence. | |
| The project is currently led by artists and researchers Quelic Berga-Carreras and Azahara Cerezo. | |
| Collaborators and developers: Marc Villanueva, Huaqian Zhang, Carlos Carbonell, Marta Ibarra, Karisha Meléndez, Carol Mas, Kat Leverton and Mariona Cuyàs. | |
| The first version of RAIO has been supported by Santa Mònica arts center (Barcelona). | |
| Software Package: Reverbe (in development)</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Default Design: How Psychology and Spirituality Can Fix AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/144</link><guid isPermaLink="false">144</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 144 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Default Design: How Psychology and Spirituality Can Fix AI | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Dr Manpreet (Mp) | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/144 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Default Design: How Psychology and Spirituality Can Fix AI | |
| Description: | |
| What is truly worth unlearning? What if the pathway to better AI isn't through relentless data collection, but through the mindful practice of forgetting? This session explores the cognitive, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of letting go, challenging our fixation on data retention and infinite optimisation. A space where we boldly challenge the defaults. | |
| Join me in a transformative dialogue that blends insights from developmental psychology, AI ethics, and spiritual traditions. Together, we'll ask: What is truly worth letting-go? | |
| We’ll explore the parallels between how humans and machines acquire and prune information, recognizing the internal and external pressures to perform and perfect. | |
| This session will introduce "The Gentle Glitch," a concept where an AI's unexpected behavior can trigger a moment of emotional clarity. This provokes us to redefine true intelligence and redesign systems with a more human-centered approach. | |
| We will engage with cognitive science (Piaget, Miller, cognitive load theory), neural network analogies, and evidence-based research-backed practices of unlearning. Our spiritual inspiration will draw from Buddhist traditions on non-attachment, the Sikh practice of dissolving the ego (Haumai) through the teachings of Shri Guru Granth Sahib, and Indigenous traditions guided by a deep connection to the land and nature. | |
| Through guided reflection and dynamic dialogue, we will create a space for you to identify one "memory"—whether emotional, intellectual, or digital—that you are ready to release today. | |
| This is more than a talk; it's a practice, a ritual, and a reimagining of wisdom in an era of intelligent machines. | |
| Key Audience Takeaways: | |
| - Technologists & Designers: A critical framework for designing ethical AI systems that prioritize human well-being over endless optimization. | |
| - Researchers & Educators: A deeper understanding of the parallels between human cognitive development and AI learning, fostering interdisciplinary thought. | |
| - Neurodivergent Individuals: Insights on how mindful information processing can help navigate the challenges of information overload. | |
| - Anyone Seeking Release: The opportunity to identify and begin to unlearn a personal "default"—a belief, memory, or data-driven compulsion. | |
| Learning Outcomes: | |
| - Understand parallels between human and machine learning regarding information retention and forgetting. | |
| - Explore the ethical and emotional dimensions of data overload and the societal push for infinite information. | |
| - Engage in a tangible unlearning practice grounded in scientific and spiritual traditions. | |
| - Leave with a personal reflection and a new perspective on building more ethical, compassionate technology.</description></item><item><title>Your cloud isn't yours: Rethinking security in a world of shared infrastructure</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/111</link><guid isPermaLink="false">111</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 111 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Your cloud isn't yours: Rethinking security in a world of shared infrastructure | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Onur Alp Soner | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/111 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Your cloud isn't yours: Rethinking security in a world of shared infrastructure | |
| Description: | |
| Today, nearly every layer of our digital infrastructure, from measuring behavior to delivering messages, running deployments, making decisions, and now generating content and code, runs on multi-tenant, opaque, centralized SaaS platforms. We've inherited an architecture designed for speed and convenience, not transparency or control. | |
| This talk challenges the idea that shared cloud services offer "security by default." Through real-world examples of cloud failures, AI misalignment, and overlooked dependencies, we'll explore how organizations lose visibility, autonomy, and accountability, often without realizing it. | |
| We'll propose a more honest and resilient model: one that reclaims infrastructure as a boundary, not just a backend. Whether deployed on private cloud or hybrid models, this approach re-centers ownership, accountability, and trust in how systems are built and secured. | |
| Participants will walk away with: | |
| - A deeper understanding of how modern SaaS architecture obscures risk | |
| - Concrete examples of where "secure by default" has failed in practice | |
| - A practical lens for evaluating infrastructure decisions through trust, traceability, and intentional design | |
| - A case for treating security not as a badge or a product feature, but as something you build and own | |
| This session is for technologists, designers, digital rights advocates, public infrastructure thinkers, and anyone questioning what it really means to build on infrastructure you don't fully control.</description></item><item><title>The Watched City: Surveillance, Rights and Urban Space</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/140</link><guid isPermaLink="false">140</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 140 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The Watched City: Surveillance, Rights and Urban Space | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Hanna Pishchyk; Julian Hauser; Masho Dzneladze | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/140 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The Watched City: Surveillance, Rights and Urban Space | |
| Description: | |
| This session will explore the social costs of smart city technologies, particularly how surveillance systems, often presented as lawful and efficient, reinforce structural inequality, target marginalised communities, and undermine public trust. In the participatory, non-formal educational format, we will explore real-world examples of urban surveillance: facial recognition, predictive policing, biometric data collection, etc. Through discussion, interactive exercises, and collective reflection, we will explore how these systems work and how the narrative of "smartness" and "efficiency" often obscures their harms. | |
| We will examine urban experiences and case studies from underrepresented regions in Europe and beyond, such as Serbia, Georgia, and Brazil, to see how surveillance technologies operate unevenly across class, race, gender, and geography. The session allows participants to explore their thoughts regarding the following questions: Who designs smart cities and for whom? What is lost when digital control systems are normalised? Where do care, equity, and community agency intersect in urban tech development? | |
| During this session, we want participants to collect and share strategies for resisting, subverting, or reimagining harmful urban technologies in their local contexts. We will also map a set of shared principles for more just and inclusive tech systems in cities, grounded in lived experience, resistance, and collective imagination.</description></item><item><title>Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold: Re-designing social media from the margins</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/37</link><guid isPermaLink="false">37</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 37 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold: Re-designing social media from the margins | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Bishakha Datta | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/37 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold: Re-designing social media from the margins | |
| Description: | |
| Things Fall Apart is a mashup; we bring together a diverse set of people - who usually don't come together - to re-design social media based on our lived experiences, dreams and desires. Before MozFest, we will already have done the preparatory work needed to build from the margins. In this session, we'll share a prototype of a social media platform redesigned by communities of young women, trans and queer persons, sex workers and people with disabilities. And we'll gather input on specific challenges we face in this redesign. | |
| Here's some context. We’re Point of View, a non-profit in India, that builds digital gender justice. All the constituencies we work with - women, queer, trans, sex working, disabled - are part of the 5 billion people who use social media today. For pleasure. For work. For friendship. Just for fun. But they face so many day-to-day issues that social media is now an experience they ‘survive’, rather than ‘thrive’ in. We want to change this. | |
| In March and April this year, we did 12 focus group discussions around India with marginalised communities around image-based harms in digital spaces. Everyone had horror stories to share. And innovative ideas to change social media, including must-have technical features. | |
| Young women in low-income communities want features to prevent their DPs being screenshotted on Instagram - these DPs are often used to create fake profiles. They want fees and penalties for people who misuse their photos without consent. Sex workers want auto-delete features for sexual or nude videos. Everyone wants ‘permission layers’ instead of one blanket permission for using a social media platform. But what would all this look like in practice? | |
| Building on this, we’re partnering with Quicksand Design Studio to re-imagine social media. In September this year, we’ll host a design lab-cum-hackathon based on design justice principles: privileging lived experiences; seeing the designer as a facilitator/collaborator; centring the voices of those who use social media; prioritizing design’s impact on communities. | |
| At the end of this immersive exercise, we expect to come up with a prototype for a new social media experience based on a non-Western, queer, feminist, inter-generational lens. That's what we want to share and build out in this session.</description></item><item><title>Beyond Shareholder Value: Reimagining Profit Models for Inclusive Prosperity</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/119</link><guid isPermaLink="false">119</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 119 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Beyond Shareholder Value: Reimagining Profit Models for Inclusive Prosperity | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Arpit Tandon | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/119 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Beyond Shareholder Value: Reimagining Profit Models for Inclusive Prosperity | |
| Description: | |
| The pursuit of shareholder value has been capitalism's north star for decades. Yet this singular focus has led to concerning outcomes: declining labor share of income, widening economic inequality, and growing public disillusionment with market economies. | |
| In this thought-provoking session, I'll challenge conventional wisdom by examining how traditional profit-maximization models have transformed open platforms like the internet into concentrated markets dominated by a handful of powerful players. | |
| Drawing on my experience at the intersection of business innovation and emerging technologies, I'll identify the critical shortcomings of shareholder-centric approaches: | |
| Compensation structures that fail to distribute value fairly | |
| Tax frameworks that incentivize extraction over reinvestment | |
| Short-termism that sacrifices sustainable growth for quarterly results | |
| Power consolidation that stifles competition and innovation | |
| But critique alone doesn't drive change. The heart of this talk showcases pioneering alternatives emerging across high-growth sectors including AI, Web3, and climate tech. Through concrete case studies, attendees will discover how forward-thinking companies are successfully implementing: | |
| Community-driven governance models | |
| Transparent value distribution mechanisms | |
| Shared ownership structures | |
| Equitable compensation frameworks that align all stakeholders | |
| Participants will leave with actionable insights and practical frameworks they can immediately apply to reshape their own organizations' approaches to value creation and distribution.</description></item><item><title>Myth or Reality? Monopolies and profit models</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/138</link><guid isPermaLink="false">138</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 138 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Myth or Reality? Monopolies and profit models | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Scott Chipolina; Claire Godfrey; Hasan Patel | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/138 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Myth or Reality? Monopolies and profit models | |
| Description: | |
| Myths are sociologically important, helping us to understand the world around us. But despite their social uses, myths are fictional. When myths are used to justify and protect a harmful profit model, we all lose out. | |
| Monopolies in financial markets — with big tech firms seated at the head of the table — are propped up by a complex web of myths and narratives, wielded by highly trained lobbyists paid to uphold a status quo that protects excessive concentrations of economic power. | |
| In our proposed forum, we will look at these harmful myths that justify mass deregulation, enable private capital to influence public policy, and normalise the extraction of wealth from the many to benefit the few. We will we bust the myths that uphold the status quo, we will offer a new, alternative approach that benefits wider society and reclaims economic power from vested interests.</description></item><item><title>AI for social good: the new face of technosolutionism</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2104</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2104</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2104 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI for social good: the new face of technosolutionism | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Abeba Birhane | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2104 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI for social good: the new face of technosolutionism | |
| Description: | |
| The growing enthusiasm for applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) to humanitarian and development goals has sparked a surge in "AI for Social Good" (AI4SG) initiatives from humanitarian and philanthropic institutions and tech monopolies alike. While these initiatives aspire to address global challenges such as poverty, gender inequality, and climate change, they often conceal deeper issues: AI systems that 1) simply fail to live up to their claims 2) encode Eurocentrism, systemic inequities, and injustices, and 3) built under capitalist, extractive, and borderline illegal practices. | |
| In this talk, I argue that many AI4SG efforts are less about meaningful social transformation and more about techsolutionism—where complex political, historical, and social issues are reduced to technical problems assumed to be solvable through “innovation”. By critically examining who defines “good,” who benefits, and what structural issues remain unaddressed, this talk challenges the dominant narratives around AI4SG and calls for a more accountable, human-centric, and context-aware approach to “social good”.</description></item><item><title>Behind the App Icon: Uncovering Hidden Censorship</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/29</link><guid isPermaLink="false">29</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 29 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Behind the App Icon: Uncovering Hidden Censorship | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Benjamin | |
| start_at: | |
| end_at: | |
| timezone: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/29 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Behind the App Icon: Uncovering Hidden Censorship | |
| Description: | |
| Who decides which apps you can access? | |
| In this forum, we’ll explore how mobile app stores—operated by Apple and Google—have become global gatekeepers of information. Through the App Censorship Project (appcensorship.org, applecensorship.com and googlecensorship.org), we monitor 175 Apple App Stores and 224 Google Play Stores to detect and document how governments and tech companies restrict access to mobile apps, often without transparency, accountability, or user knowledge. | |
| Drawing from our ongoing research—including our recent investigations into the mass removal of VPN apps in Russia, the publication of our App Freedom Index, and our findings on social and news app unavailability in countries like China, Afghanistan, and India—we’ll examine the hidden power dynamics governing digital ecosystems. | |
| Participants will engage with real-time censorship data from AppleCensorship.com and GoogleCensorship.org, then break into small groups to explore critical questions: | |
| * Who is most impacted by app removals? | |
| * How do geopolitical alliances shape what apps are allowed? | |
| * What transparency obligations should app stores have? | |
| * How can civil society challenge opaque tech governance? | |
| We’ll close by collaboratively drafting principles for ethical mobile ecosystem governance and identifying concrete actions for participants to support digital rights advocacy. Whether you're a policymaker, activist, developer, or concerned user, this session invites you to co-create strategies to confront censorship and reclaim agency in mobile tech governance.</description></item><item><title>AI Kill Chain in SWANA: Surveillance & Predictive Targeting in Palestine and Lebanon</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/261</link><guid isPermaLink="false">261</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 261 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI Kill Chain in SWANA: Surveillance & Predictive Targeting in Palestine and Lebanon | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nada K. Mousa | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/261 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI Kill Chain in SWANA: Surveillance & Predictive Targeting in Palestine and Lebanon | |
| Description: | |
| AI systems are increasingly deployed as tools of militarized control, surveillance, and predictive targeting, especially in SWANA conflict zones. This session presents key findings from a forthcoming white paper (Summer 2025) and other research developed by local researchers as part of the Mozilla Tech & Society Fellowship project with the Arab Reform Initiative.We focus on how AI-driven technologies used in Palestine and Lebanon reproduce colonial hierarchies and settler-colonial surveillance logics. These systems are not merely technical, they are deeply political, reinforcing domination, and control. | |
| The session will highlight Israeli-developed systems like Lavender and Gospel (predictive targeting), as well as biometric surveillance infrastructures such as Red Wolf and Blue Wolf. We will explore the complicity of Big Tech and geopolitical powers in financing and developing these tools, via infrastructure provision, cloud services, and security partnerships, while SWANA communities are systematically excluded from the global policy spaces shaping the future of AI. | |
| Following the presentation, we’ll open the floor for a moderated discussion exploring: | |
| 1- Cross-regional parallels with AI deployment in other militarized or occupied contexts; | |
| 2- Gaps in global governance frameworks and ethical debates; | |
| 3- Pathways toward more inclusive policy discussions and solidarity networks. | |
| Participants will leave with: | |
| 1- A deeper understanding of how AI is deployed in warfare and surveillance in Palestine and Lebanon; | |
| 2- Insights into how SWANA is not an outlier, but a harbinger of global trends in militarized tech; | |
| 3- Reflections on how to support resistance, accountability, and ethical research practices from the Global Majority.</description></item><item><title>How Open Source AI Business Models Work and Create Competitive Advantages</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/246</link><guid isPermaLink="false">246</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 246 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: How Open Source AI Business Models Work and Create Competitive Advantages | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Brad Micklea; Mark Surman; Kristy Cook | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/246 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: How Open Source AI Business Models Work and Create Competitive Advantages | |
| Description: | |
| In an era dominated by a few large AI platforms, open source is emerging as a powerful counterforce—one that empowers developers, startups, and entire communities to build more diverse, inclusive, and consumer-friendly technologies. This panel explores open source AI business models and how to create a long standing company with an open source competitive advantage. | |
| Moderated by Mark Surman, Executive Director of the Mozilla.org and a longtime advocate for open systems and digital rights, this conversation will bring together leaders from the forefront of the open source AI movement including companies from the Mozilla Ventures portfolio: Union AI, Jozu and others.</description></item><item><title>AI Authoritarianism - The Loss of Human Sovereignty</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/245</link><guid isPermaLink="false">245</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 245 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI Authoritarianism - The Loss of Human Sovereignty | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Taddes (Tadas) Korris | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/245 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI Authoritarianism - The Loss of Human Sovereignty | |
| Description: | |
| With the rapid rise of AI technologies, humanity is losing control of its future. Much has been said of about promises of AI technologies to emancipate people from drudgery and scarcity, but the reality so far has not delivered such egalitarian promises. Companies are already firing employees and replacing them with untested AI models, social media is flooded with disinformation, and content created by humans is being used without regard for its creators and monetized without their permission. This is not the AI utopia we had been promised. | |
| This talk aims to look at the many authoritarian sides of the AI revolution and how it is being used by corporations and bad actors to capture our governments and labor, all for the sake of profit and control. This talk not only engages with the technical and structural components of AI technology, but looks at tenets of authoritarianism to illustrate the dangers in front of us. From the establishment of a mythic narrative, to anti-intellectualism and propaganda, to the feeling of inevitability related to rapid change, many AI boosters seek to disempower normal people in having a say in their futures. | |
| The goal of this talk is to see AI from this angle and understand how to fight this authoritarian slide. Our hope resides in collective actions taken by broad coalitions of people who are clear-eyed and consistent. If humanity seeks to have a say in how AI is used, to respect the rule of law and the dignity of each living being, we have to understand the darkest motivations playing out in front of our eyes.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Plastic Labs</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/206</link><guid isPermaLink="false">206</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 206 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Plastic Labs | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Vince Trost | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/206 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Plastic Labs | |
| Description: | |
| Plastic is a research-driven company building at the intersection of human and machine learning. We believe re-centering LLM app development around the user will unlock a rich landscape of deeply personalized, autonomous agents.</description></item><item><title>Building Technology from Africa: From Local Innovation to Global Impact</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/262</link><guid isPermaLink="false">262</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 262 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Building Technology from Africa: From Local Innovation to Global Impact | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Remy Muhire; Pelonomi Moiloa; Richard Rose; Adam Mullinax | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/262 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Building Technology from Africa: From Local Innovation to Global Impact | |
| Description: | |
| Join leaders from pioneering teams—including Lelapa AI, a pan-African research lab developing culturally-grounded, locally-trained models, Pindo, a communications platform enabling scalable, voice-driven customer engagement across Africa—and Sendmarc, a South African first but global company that mitigates email phishing attacks - as they share firsthand perspectives on the technical, infrastructural, and linguistic challenges of building products that works for everyone globally with roots in Africa.</description></item><item><title>Internet Blocking 101: Understanding Censorship in the Age of Shutdowns</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/12</link><guid isPermaLink="false">12</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 12 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Internet Blocking 101: Understanding Censorship in the Age of Shutdowns | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Valentina Aguana; Andres Azpurua | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/12 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Internet Blocking 101: Understanding Censorship in the Age of Shutdowns | |
| Description: | |
| In an age of increasing internet censorship and shutdowns, particularly across the global majority, it's crucial to understand how these disruptions occur and what they look like in practice. This hands-on lab is designed for anyone curious about how the internet can be manipulated or restricted. | |
| We’ll start with an accessible explanation of how the internet works and walk through the most common forms of censorship—DNS tampering, IP blocking, SNI filtering, and more. We’ll also touch on what’s happening in different regions around the world, including lesser-known cases in Europe, like Spain. | |
| Participants will interact with demo WiFi networks designed to simulate real-world censorship scenarios. You'll learn to identify different types of blocking through guided exploration—detecting whether content is being filtered, redirected, or entirely shut down. | |
| ***Optionally:** pending some validations and depending on the room layout, we could pay a card game designed to help teach about internet censorship and different options to overcome it, instead of the practical demo* | |
| ### By the end of the session, you’ll gain: | |
| - A better understanding of how censorship manifests at a technical level. | |
| - Insight into regional trends and real-world examples of internet shutdowns and restrictions. | |
| - Practical skills and a chance to test your skill for recognizing and diagnosing different forms of censorship. | |
| This lab is for anyone interested in digital rights, technology, and internet freedom interested in understanding the issue at greater depth—not technical experts</description></item><item><title>AI & feminist coalition building in favor of SRHR in war zones - A case study from Lebanon</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/171</link><guid isPermaLink="false">171</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 171 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI & feminist coalition building in favor of SRHR in war zones - A case study from Lebanon | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Dima Saber; Doreen Toutikian | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/171 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI & feminist coalition building in favor of SRHR in war zones - A case study from Lebanon | |
| Description: | |
| In this session, Meedan and OMGyno will share early insights from a collaborative project launched in April 2025 aimed at identifying and addressing critical information gaps related to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in Lebanon and the broader North Africa and West Asia (NAWA) region. | |
| The project started with a pilot initiative led by OMGyno and supported by Meedan during the recent war in Lebanon, which engaged over 200 migrant domestic worker women in a Beirut shelter who needed SRH care. Building on this experience, OMGyno formed a coalition with feminist organizations to co-create community-driven SRHR resources in local languages, designed to meet the evolving needs of women, gender diverse, and marginalized communities in crisis contexts; these resources are now being used to build a culturally relevant AI chatbot. | |
| The session will include a discussion and a technical demonstration of the chatbot currently in development by Meedan. This tool is designed to enable OMGyno and other partner organizations to respond to community queries in private messaging platforms—enhancing accessibility, privacy, and contextual relevance.</description></item><item><title>Citizen Data Commons: Community Stewardship in Action</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/157</link><guid isPermaLink="false">157</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 157 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Citizen Data Commons: Community Stewardship in Action | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: ANTONIO FUMERO; Antonio Pulido; Ernestina Alvarez Corona | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/157 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Citizen Data Commons: Community Stewardship in Action | |
| Description: | |
| How can neighbourhoods reclaim control over the data they constantly generate? This participatory forum brings together activists, municipal officials, researchers, and everyday residents to design "Citizen Data Commons"—community‑run trusts that collect, govern, and monetise local data for public good. After setting the stage with brief lightning talks on existing models (Barcelona’s DECODE, Amsterdam’s Data Commons, Aragón OpenGov), participants will rotate through interactive stations mapping (1) sources of civic data, (2) governance rules that preserve privacy and equity, and (3) social value use‑cases such as urban planning, social services, and climate resilience. The outcome will be a collaboratively drafted Data Commons Canvas—a template any city can remix. By the end, attendees will have tangible next steps, open‑source documentation, and a network to pilot their own commons.</description></item><item><title>Killing in Code: AI, Militarism and the Machinery of Oppression</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/223</link><guid isPermaLink="false">223</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 223 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Killing in Code: AI, Militarism and the Machinery of Oppression | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Paul Biggar; Tawana Petty; Nada K. Mousa; Zach Campbell | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/223 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Killing in Code: AI, Militarism and the Machinery of Oppression | |
| Description: | |
| AI is not neutral. It has long been a tool of surveillance, control, and militarized power and today, it is being embedded deeper into the global war machine. | |
| From drone strikes and autonomous weapons systems to predictive policing and biometric surveillance, AI is being used to strip war of its human dimensions, enabling mass violence and state oppression from afar. Governments now have the capability to kill without conscience, surveil without suspicion, and silence dissent at scale—all under the guise of efficiency, precision, and national security. | |
| This session will confront the expanding role of AI in modern warfare and its devastating social, political, and ecological consequences. We will examine how military AI sets dangerous precedents: it builds technological blueprints that are later turned inward, used by governments to surveil, control, and criminalize their own populations, particularly marginalized communities. | |
| Participants will explore: | |
| - How AI is currently being used in military and surveillance systems globally | |
| - What kind of societal norm this technology creates and who it benefits or targets | |
| - Where resistance is happening, and what it would take to dismantle these systems | |
| - How to imagine and build alternatives that prioritize life, peace, and justice | |
| - This is a call to examine the roots of AI’s militarization, resist its expansion, and imagine a future where tech does not serve violence…but justice. | |
| Pre-Reads | |
| - “Surveillance and the Colonial Present” by Derek Gregory</description></item><item><title>Feminist Cyberlaw Futures</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/90</link><guid isPermaLink="false">90</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 90 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Feminist Cyberlaw Futures | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Amanda Levendowski Tepski | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/90 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Feminist Cyberlaw Futures | |
| Description: | |
| Our community needs a fresh framework for imagining tech governance, which has been largely defined by bros wearing Patagonia vests, billionaires wanting to colonize Mars, and the lawyers who litigate or lobby for them. Problems with this approach are especially evident in cyberlaw. Iconic cyberlaw cases center technologies that appropriate pirated nude images to fuel search engines, ones that profit from harmful user-generated videos, and others that rely on scraped images to create a hotness ranking website of peers. But none of the coders behind those technologies lost lawsuits over legality. Rather, those tools blossomed into Google Image Search, YouTube, and Meta, all run by the companies with the power to shape tech governance. | |
| Those tools share something else: misogyny. Coders engineered them to exploit women’s bodies. Eric Schmidt, the co-founder of Google, confessed that Google Image Search was launched to oogle Jennifer Lopez’s body in her gauzy green Grammy’s gown. YouTube was launched to oogle Janet Jackson’s bared breast after Justin Timberlake ripped her bodice during the Super Bowl Halftime Show. And in Congressional testimony, Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he’d launched FaceMash to oogle his women peers in the Harvard Class of 2006. Those women never gave their consent to be used for profit, and they suffered for their exploitation without compensation. | |
| Feminist cyberlaw provides that fresh framework for imagining tech governance. Pioneered by Amanda Levendowski (me) and Meg Leta Jones, feminist cyberlaw examines how gender, race, sexuality, disability, and class shape cyberspace and the laws that govern it. Drawing on more than a decade of my cyberlaw practice and teaching, this Lab will explore how copyright emerged as the most powerful cyberlaw to counter oppressive tech governance. Not only does it play a role in all three of the technologies highlighted above, this Lab explores a trio of case studies about biased artificial intelligence, invasive face surveillance, and nonconsensual intimate imagery that exposes why copyright can be a powerful tool for forcing technologies to be just, not just legal. | |
| To put feminist cyberlaw lessons into practice, participants will be invited to redact portions of legal documents using a custom Mozilla-compatible bookmarklet co-created by Georgetown Law students and faculty, empowering participants to create redactive poems that radically reimagines tech governance through feminist cyberlaw futures. (Of course, this exercise also implicates copyright.)</description></item><item><title>Ventures Roundtable 1</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/201</link><guid isPermaLink="false">201</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 201 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Roundtable 1 | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Saayeli Bruni | |
| start_at: | |
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| timezone: | |
| location_venue: | |
| location_room: | |
| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/201 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Roundtable 1 | |
| Description: | |
| Join a selection of Mozilla Ventures portfolio companies who will be showcasing their work.</description></item><item><title>Celebrating Impact: The Common Voice Hall of Fame</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/167</link><guid isPermaLink="false">167</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 167 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Celebrating Impact: The Common Voice Hall of Fame | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Michelle Ulea-Vang | |
| start_at: | |
| end_at: | |
| timezone: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/167 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Celebrating Impact: The Common Voice Hall of Fame | |
| Description: | |
| Celebrate the transformative power of Common Voice! This interactive space will serve as a "Hall of Fame," showcasing the diverse impact of Common Voice across various countries and domains, while highlighting specific use cases and the innovative applications that have emerged. | |
| Key Features could include: | |
| 1. Global Impact Showcase: Explore a visually engaging display that highlights success stories from around the world. This section can illustrate how Common Voice has empowered communities, researchers, and developers to create voice-enabled applications that reflect diverse languages and dialects. Attendees will gain insight into the breadth of impact, demonstrating the inclusivity and representation that voice technology can achieve. | |
| 2. Use Cases Spotlight: Discover a curated selection of specific use cases that exemplify the use of Common Voice datasets. This area will feature compelling narratives and visuals that underscore the human stories behind the technology. Interactive elements will allow participants to delve deeper into each project. | |
| 3. Live Demonstration Zone: Engage with a hands-on demo area where attendees can interact with various applications built using Common Voice. This space will feature live demonstrations of innovative tools, allowing participants to experience firsthand the solutions that have emerged from Common Voice. Attendees will be encouraged to explore, ask questions, and envision new possibilities for their own projects. | |
| 4. Collaborative Engagement: Throughout the installation, we could foster an open dialogue by providing spaces for attendees to share their thoughts and ideas on the future of voice technology. Interactive boards and feedback stations will invite participants to contribute their insights, creating a collaborative environment that inspires new initiatives aligned with the values of Common Voice. | |
| This installation celebrates the achievements of Common Voice while challenging the default design paradigms in voice technology. Together, we will explore how open collaboration can lead to impactful solutions that resonate across cultures and communities. Let’s unlearn the defaults and reimagine a future where every voice is heard!</description></item><item><title>Tap & Share</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/173</link><guid isPermaLink="false">173</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 173 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Tap & Share | |
| track: 25 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Sarah Al-Yahya | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/173 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "25", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Tap & Share | |
| Description: | |
| This interactive web installation interrogates how TikTok LIVE – the platform’s overlooked live feature – has emerged as a site of survival and visibility during Gaza’s “live-streamed genocide.” While media coverage frames the genocide through the lens of “horror-in-real-time,” what appears on TikTok LIVE is more mundane, less viewed, yet deeply violent. Moderation biases and exploitative monetization demand critical attention, especially as Gazan streamers tactically carve out space for agency, visibility, and care. | |
| The web experience invites viewers to explore how these streams contrast with the environment TikTok creates. The interface mirrors the platform’s sanitized aesthetics – playful design, emoji bursts, engagement prompts – while centering the streamers who navigate biased systems and monetized pop-ups to sustain presence, community, and solidarity. | |
| The work confronts structural violence filtered through stickers and sparkles, while illuminating everyday ingenuity in reworking exploitative systems. It asks: How do platform architectures shape the conditions of witnessing? How do streamers assert visibility and agency despite structural silencing? How do viewers become co-creators of digital resistance rooted in care and solidarity?</description></item><item><title>The revolution will not be NGO-led: Strategically supporting grassroots youth movements.</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2102</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2102</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2102 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The revolution will not be NGO-led: Strategically supporting grassroots youth movements. | |
| track: 89 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Georgia Rigg | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2102 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "89", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The revolution will not be NGO-led: Strategically supporting grassroots youth movements. | |
| Description: | |
| Youth activists are driving urgent struggles worldwide. Many NGOs, funders and institutions genuinely want to help - but well-meaning support often drifts into control. Professionalised campaigning squeezes out risk and creativity. Young people are still tokenised and excluded - or (arguably worse?) absorbed into institutions, swapping radical organising for drafting theories of change (sorry!!) | |
| I’ve felt this tension firsthand and I'm sure many others at MozFest have too. I joined Amnesty as a 'grassroots' activist, certain I wouldn’t last long. Eight years later, between back-to-back Teams calls, I feel a deep pull toward a messier, more disruptive, inherently “unprofessional” spirit that feels so desperately needed right now. | |
| So what can NGOs do in this moment? What’s our role in the revolution/s? | |
| At Amnesty International our Digital Disruptors project has been one attempt: working with small groups of young activists, offering funding and strategy while trying to make support ethical, non-extractive, and genuinely useful. It hasn’t been easy—we’re still very much un/learning. | |
| In my talk, I’ll be unpacking this tension and inviting open reflection. Together we’ll ask: | |
| 🔹 What gives grassroots movements their inherent power, and what undermines it? | |
| 🔹 How has the ‘professionalism of activism’ shaped resistance? | |
| 🔹 What trust-building practices actually work across borders, digital spaces and power dynamics? | |
| If you’ll be at #MozFest and this resonates—I’d love to see you there!</description></item><item><title>Find Your Place in Space & Time | Restorative Mat Pilates - Session 2</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2089</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2089</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2089 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Find Your Place in Space & Time | Restorative Mat Pilates - Session 2 | |
| track: 88 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Carli Cole | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2089 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "88", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Find Your Place in Space & Time | Restorative Mat Pilates - Session 2 | |
| Description: | |
| Join us for a 25-minute restorative mat Pilates class designed to ground you in space and time, while cultivating a deeper mind-body connection. | |
| This all-levels class offers a gentle movement experience focused on breath, mobility, concentration, and coordination. Through intentional movement and breath, we’ll quiet external noise and turn inward, grounding us in the present. | |
| Whether you're new to Pilates or an experienced mover, this session provides a supportive space to connect and reset your nervous system.</description></item><item><title>What's the worst that can happen? Unlearning Machine Neutrality through Imagining Dystopia</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/104</link><guid isPermaLink="false">104</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 104 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: What's the worst that can happen? Unlearning Machine Neutrality through Imagining Dystopia | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jihyun; Gabor; Alia ElKattan | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/104 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: What's the worst that can happen? Unlearning Machine Neutrality through Imagining Dystopia | |
| Description: | |
| As AI systems like large language models (LLMs) become embedded in daily life, shaping education, guiding decisions, and influencing public discourse, the myth of machine neutrality remains. But we believe that neutrality isn’t the absence of bias; it often mirrors the people, institutions, and agendas behind a system. Equally impactful are the values we fail to acknowledge. | |
| This forum invites participants to unlearn the idea that LLMs are neutral tools. We’ll explore how moral, political, and economic values are woven into these systems, and what unfolds when those values go unchecked by imagining dystopia and how to prevent it. | |
| Seven years after Survival of the Best Fit, our open-source game on hiring algorithm bias showcased at MozFest 2018, we revisit core questions in the new era of generative AI. Who defines fairness? What does bias look like today? How can communities intervene? | |
| Workshop (3 parts) | |
| 1. Dystopia Brainstorming (Group Work) | |
| Participants split into groups to imagine worst-case futures enabled by LLMs and near-AGI across contexts like healthcare, employment, security, daily life and over various timeframes e.g. next year to next two decades. | |
| 2. Explainer & Current Landscape (Full Group) | |
| A concise walkthrough of how LLMs are trained, the human frameworks shaping them, real-world adversarial risks, and existing intervention or regulatory frameworks. | |
| 3. Designing Better Futures (Group Work) | |
| Groups reconvene to devise intervention strategies: values-based guardrails, governance ideas and design alternatives that could counteract the dystopias. This phase emphasizes that LLM design remains very much human-value driven, thus shapeable, not inevitable, with thoughtful and representative design. | |
| No coding required. This session is for anyone interested in the moral foundations of the technologies shaping our future.</description></item><item><title>Unlearning Through Cinema: Brave Futures Artist Talkback</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/276</link><guid isPermaLink="false">276</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 276 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Unlearning Through Cinema: Brave Futures Artist Talkback | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/276 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Unlearning Through Cinema: Brave Futures Artist Talkback | |
| Description: | |
| Brave Futures is an experimental platform that challenges emerging filmmakers to create bold, intersectional short films within a constrained timeframe. At MozFest 2025, six commissioned artists responded to the theme of Unlearning through the prompts Cultivating a Protopia and Reimagining AI as Ancestral Intelligence. In this talkback, moderated by OTV Co-Founder & Executive Director Elijah McKinnon, the artists will share their creative process, reflect on the themes, and explore how speculative storytelling can shape more just and inclusive futures. | |
| Join us for a dynamic conversation that highlights regionally rooted storytelling, connects Barcelona’s creative communities with a global network of technologists, activists, and makers, and features the exclusive premiere of the Brave Futures Supercut followed by a live audience Q&A.</description></item><item><title>Butterfly Effect</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/178</link><guid isPermaLink="false">178</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 178 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Butterfly Effect | |
| track: 87 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nina Ajnira Karisik | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/178 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "87", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Butterfly Effect | |
| Description: | |
| At MozFest, Nina Ajnira Karisik invites you into a spring-like oasis alive with robotic butterflies powered by AI. These delicate creatures listen for meaning in your words; each time a butterfly flaps, you’ll find yourself guessing what the AI just recognized. | |
| It’s a mystery game, a technical demo, and a meditation on how AI systems “think”; and how often they flatten or overlook the nuance that makes us human. Set within this living landscape, the butterflies embody a quiet struggle between the positive and negative forces of technology. Each flicker and flutter is both playful and profound, inviting you to wonder: whose side will your words help them win?</description></item><item><title>Confess Your (Internet) Sins +Prayer</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2093</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2093</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2093 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Confess Your (Internet) Sins +Prayer | |
| track: 25 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2093 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "25", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Confess Your (Internet) Sins +Prayer | |
| Description: | |
| tk</description></item><item><title>Safetypedia: Crowdsourcing App Transparency</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/20</link><guid isPermaLink="false">20</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 20 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Safetypedia: Crowdsourcing App Transparency | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Lisa LeVasseur | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/20 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Safetypedia: Crowdsourcing App Transparency | |
| Description: | |
| Can we train and foster a worldwide community of citizen scientists -- certified mobile app safety inspectors--to collect the data needed to generate accurate safety labels for mobile apps? Can this community effectively shift the balance of power through app behavior transparency? We think we can, and we think it might be the only way to keep on top of the growing invisible risks in constantly changing mobile apps. | |
| Safetypedia is a pilot project Internet Safety Labs (ISL) has been running for several months. The purpose of this session is to expose the project to a larger, worldwide community, solicit participants, and to foster dialogue on the approach. In particular in this session we will: | |
| - Explain ISL's mobile app safety labels as seen on appmicroscope.org (example app: https://appmicroscope.org/app/1579/ ), | |
| - Explain the Safetypedia project, | |
| - Explain the ISL safety inspector certification process, | |
| - Demonstrate the Safetypedia data collection portal, | |
| - Explain how safety labels are generated as a combination of automations plus human research, | |
| - Share the results of the pilot to date--how many trained and certified inspectors, how many safety labels generated, | |
| - Discuss viability of the project as a sustainable transparency intervention, subverting deliberate opacity and mysticism surrounding technology.</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Grasp</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/215</link><guid isPermaLink="false">215</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 215 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Grasp | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ed Matthews | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/215 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Grasp | |
| Description: | |
| We believe that everyone can have equal and unconstrained access to educational experiences on par with Oxford, Cambridge, CalTech, et cetera. | |
| We believe that this can be achieved with a new class of learning tools. | |
| Try them yourself !</description></item><item><title>Data Storage in Living Matter</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/39</link><guid isPermaLink="false">39</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 39 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Data Storage in Living Matter | |
| track: 17 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Monika Seyfried; Annelie Berner | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/39 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "17", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Data Storage in Living Matter | |
| Description: | |
| This talk will explore the evolving landscape of data storage, examining the ecological impact of current technologies and the potential of nature-based alternatives. Our interdisciplinary team of scientists, designers, and artists is investigating how digital information can be stored in living matter such as plants as a sustainable solution to the growing environmental costs of data centers. | |
| Traditional data storage in digital cloud infrastructure requires vast amounts of electricity to power servers and cooling systems, contributing significantly to global carbon emissions. As the demand for data storage grows exponentially, so do its environmental consequences, making it urgent to rethink how and where we keep our digital information. | |
| Emerging biotechnologies offer innovative alternatives. By storing data in DNA or other biological systems, it becomes possible to dramatically reduce energy consumption while leveraging the natural properties of living organisms. Plants used in these systems not only hold data but also function as carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide, supporting biodiversity, and helping to regulate the climate. | |
| In this session, Annelie Berner, a specialist in data design and artistic research, and Monika Seyfried, artist and 2022 Science Breakthrough Award recipient, will lead the discussion. They will share insights into the benefits and challenges of nature-based data storage and consider whether such solutions could help mitigate the environmental damage caused by conventional data infrastructure. | |
| By critically evaluating both the possibilities and limitations of storing data in living matter, this talk aims to spark a deeper understanding of how future data technologies might align with global sustainability goals. This project is part of Monika's Seyfried fellowship at OSV: https://www.osv.llc/fellows-grantee/monika-seyfried</description></item><item><title>The Wikipedia Test: a tool for the public interest internet</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/265</link><guid isPermaLink="false">265</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 265 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The Wikipedia Test: a tool for the public interest internet | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ziski Putz; Albert Cañigueral; Pablo Aragón | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/265 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The Wikipedia Test: a tool for the public interest internet | |
| Description: | |
| Discussions about the internet in the past years have mostly revolved around surveillance risks, extractivist models, and the concentration of power, wealth, and control over the information in the hands of a few companies. Likewise, policymakers are introducing bills to tackle these risks, unaware that these laws designed to target large, for-profit platforms often have undesired ripple effects on other parts of the internet, including community-led platforms and initiatives. | |
| While these are critical issues, important parts of the internet are still made by collaborative, open knowledge, and open source projects. This aspect of the internet as an online public space is worth protecting. | |
| The human spirit behind meme machines, Reddit threads, and Wikipedia rabbit holes, which inform and reshape global culture, can only persist if regulators consider how legislation and regulations affect the broader internet. That’s why the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit hosting Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects, has created a tool to assess the impact of new technology policies on the public interest internet: the Wikipedia Test. We have found that in many cases, when a proposed law harms Wikipedia, it likely harms other online public goods that are vital for participatory online spaces, reaching sustainable development goals, ensuring accountable governance, and helping to exercise human rights. Therefore, applying a Wikipedia Test to new digital technology regulations serves as an important flag to highlight critical issues in proposed regulation. | |
| This workshop will highlight the importance of online platforms such as Decidim and Wikimedia, as well as institutions like the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, all of which provide information or essential resources that serve the public good and leverage digital technologies in the public interest. Participants will learn how to apply the Wikipedia Test to evaluate whether legislation will harm or promote these successful examples of community-led platforms that provide a digital public good. Feedback from participants will help improve the tool, making it more beneficial for digital rights defenders globally.</description></item><item><title>Funding Without Funnels: A New Way to Get Paid on the Web with Web Monetization</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/268</link><guid isPermaLink="false">268</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 268 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Funding Without Funnels: A New Way to Get Paid on the Web with Web Monetization | |
| track: 89 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Santosh Viswanatham | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/268 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "89", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Funding Without Funnels: A New Way to Get Paid on the Web with Web Monetization | |
| Description: | |
| The traditional web economy relies on surveillance-based ads, paywalls, and massive user bases -- Models that often exclude independent creators, open-source maintainers, and under-resourced communities. But what if monetizing your work on the web could be as simple as adding a single line of code? | |
| This talk introduces Web Monetization, a proposed W3C standard powered by the Interledger Protocol, that opens the door to an alternative, sustainable, and privacy-respecting model for funding web content. With just a `<link>` tag, developers can start receiving payments directly through the browser—no third-party ads, no platform lock-in, and no gatekeepers. | |
| We'll explore how this simple standard can transform how value flows online, enabling community-driven projects, like open source tools, blogs, documentation, and even audio/video sites, to generate income on their own terms. By shifting away from hypergrowth and toward fairness and accessibility, Web Monetization invites us to reimagine what success looks like on the open web. | |
| Let’s unlearn extractive digital business models—and build systems that pay creators, not platforms wisely.</description></item><item><title>Building a Purpose-Driven Data and AI Workforce: Local Voices, Global Impact</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/124</link><guid isPermaLink="false">124</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 124 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Building a Purpose-Driven Data and AI Workforce: Local Voices, Global Impact | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Lindsey Gottschalk; Lindsey | |
| start_at: | |
| end_at: | |
| timezone: | |
| location_venue: | |
| location_room: | |
| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/124 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Building a Purpose-Driven Data and AI Workforce: Local Voices, Global Impact | |
| Description: | |
| There is no question, era of AI is here. But how do we ensure that this powerful technology is accessible for all and used to drive meaningful social impact across the world? | |
| Join data.org and their panel of global partners for an engaging session on building the purpose-driven data and AI workforce. Together, we’ll challenge “parashoot-in” approaches and unlearn global north-centric models of training and capacity building. | |
| Drawing from data.org’s five Data Capacity Accelerators—based in the United States, India, Africa, Latin America, and Asia Pacific—this session offers practical insights from a globally informed and locally grounded network of more than 85 cross-sector partners. Learn how locally contextualized training, experiential learning, participatory design, frontline community engagement, and trust-building are driving sustainable data and AI impact across the globe. | |
| Through compelling stories, innovative solutions, and real-world examples, speakers will highlight the transformative power of using data and AI to tackle our greatest social challenges. Discover how training purpose-driven data and AI practitioners—rooted in community co-creation and committed to responsible practices—is accelerating the social sector. Leave inspired to bring these principles in your own work and networks.</description></item><item><title>Our Digital Afterlives in the Social Media Age</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/102</link><guid isPermaLink="false">102</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 102 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Our Digital Afterlives in the Social Media Age | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Fattori McKenna; George Oates | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/102 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Our Digital Afterlives in the Social Media Age | |
| Description: | |
| Digital content is paradoxical — seemingly permanent but actually fragile. So fragile we risk entering a Digital Dark Age. Algorithmically-oriented and profit-motivated social media platforms prioritize engagement over preservation, resulting in contemporary archives that are patchy at best, or at worst codify erasures and exclusions. | |
| Social media platforms represent perhaps the most diverse archives ever created, but we don’t yet care for them with equitable and sustainable preservation in mind. This is an urgent problem if we want an accurate record for future generations—services slip away all the time. Drawing from Flickr Foundation’s mandate to keep Flickr photos visible for the next 100 years, we want to canvass the Mozilla Festival community for their thoughts on and approaches to digital legacy. | |
| This forum will grapple with the crucial question: **How can we secure personal and communal digital legacies from today's social media?** We think this is not just a question of better technical systems, but also an opportunity to make new social practices. Together we’ll ponder what behaviors and rituals we could cultivate to not only safeguard our current collections but position ourselves, our institutions, and our platforms as better ancestors for future viewers? | |
| We'll begin by examining the limitations of current preservation models for social content, then explore new approaches to handling our ever-ballooning personal archives of networked social media: materials that are typically richly interconnected but rarely sorted or well described. This work becomes increasingly urgent when we consider the mounting planetary costs of our digital activities: rather than defaulting to 'Save All' for posterity, what else can we imagine?</description></item><item><title>AI Is Grooming US: The Tech Trajectory that Supercharges Sexual Violence and How We Redesign for Safety</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/81</link><guid isPermaLink="false">81</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 81 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI Is Grooming US: The Tech Trajectory that Supercharges Sexual Violence and How We Redesign for Safety | |
| track: 20 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Dalia Hashad (also Soma Sara) | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/81 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "20", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI Is Grooming US: The Tech Trajectory that Supercharges Sexual Violence and How We Redesign for Safety | |
| Description: | |
| As AI becomes ever faster, cheaper, and more powerful, it’s fueling a disturbing new wave of sexual violence from deepfakes to voice-cloning for exploitation. With AI labs across the world racing to develop AGI with zero guardrails, we are on the precipice of unleashing the most powerful systems for mass sexual exploitation that the world has ever seen. | |
| This session will expose how, driven by profit and speed, current AI development practices are supercharging rape culture and child sexual exploitation. | |
| With technologists, survivors, and campaigners, we will discuss what put us on the current trajectory and the design and policy principles that can help us pivot to build systems that safeguard the future. | |
| Rooted in the work of the AI Child Safety Initiative (AI CSI) - a new independent initiative supported by the Oak Foundation- this panel will explore how to dismantle the dangerous defaults that are shaping our collective future. We’ll discuss unlearning exploitative design systems and the path to building AI that resists abuse instead of enabling it.</description></item><item><title>New businessmodels for new social media</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/55</link><guid isPermaLink="false">55</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 55 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: New businessmodels for new social media | |
| track: 19 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jantien Borsboom; Pepijn Lemmens | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/55 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "19", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: New businessmodels for new social media | |
| Description: | |
| Recent developments at Meta and X have shown the need for alternative social media platforms. In the Netherlands, PublicSpaces - a network of public and civic society organisations reclaiming the internet as a force for the common good - has been working for several years on a strategy to create a landscape of 'Civic Social Media'. These are social media platforms that are more aimed at communities than individuals. That are based on public values rather than profit margins. Where members of communities can communicate, collaborate, and share information in a safe, trusted way. These platforms are managed in a sovereign manner by organisations and initiatives with a social mission. | |
| Together with the University of applied Science in Amsterdam (HvA) PublicSpaces developed a road map for the (further) development of civic social media, highlighting the role of design, technology, policy and public organizations in its realisation. One of the big challenges described in this roadmap is the need for different business models. To succesfully develop and run a Civic Social Media platform requires a different business model than what we have seen in tech before: e.g. there should be no data-extraction and no targeted advertising. | |
| In this forum session, we will share both the lessons learned and the challenges we encountered in developing new business models for the different Civic Social Media platforms that we have experimented with in the past few years. | |
| In this session, we will have an open discussion with the audience, discussing and raising new ideas on how to develop appropriate business models to succesfully sustain civic social media platforms that will not harm public values.</description></item><item><title>Youth Safety by Design in the Age of AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2096</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2096</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2096 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Youth Safety by Design in the Age of AI | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Tazin Khan; Simi Nwogugu; Wafa Ben-Hassine; Emma Leiken | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2096 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Youth Safety by Design in the Age of AI | |
| Description: | |
| AI-powered chatbots are rapidly becoming part of young people’s everyday lives: from mental health support apps to educational tools to social platforms. While these technologies hold promise for connection and care, they also raise pressing questions around safety, trust, and wellbeing. What role should civil society, philanthropy, and industry play in safeguarding young users? | |
| This panel brings together youth advocates, philanthropic leaders, and industry experts to explore the opportunities and risks of AI chatbots for young people. Together, they will discuss frameworks for ethical design, the importance of participatory youth voices, and strategies to build systems that center wellbeing and safety first.</description></item><item><title>Reclaiming Music Discovery from Recommender Systems</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/48</link><guid isPermaLink="false">48</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 48 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Reclaiming Music Discovery from Recommender Systems | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Lorenzo Porcaro | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/48 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Reclaiming Music Discovery from Recommender Systems | |
| Description: | |
| We no longer “find” music, music finds us. Streaming platforms promise endless discovery, but behind the scenes, recommender systems are reshaping our listening habits, narrowing our tastes, and limiting the visibility of underrepresented artists. What happens when we start to question these systems, and the assumptions they carry? | |
| This talk draws from the Algorithmic Auditing for Music Discoverability (AA4MD) project, a research initiative funded by the European Commission, to explore how music recommender systems influence cultural access. Through user interviews, fieldwork, and critical analysis, the project uncovers how people engage with algorithmic curation, and where they encounter its blind spots, biases, and constraints. | |
| We’ll take a deep dive into: | |
| - How music recommenders work, and how they quietly shape what we hear | |
| - Where users notice (or don’t notice) algorithmic influence in their listening | |
| - Why diversity suffers in automated environments | |
| - What it means to become aware of, resist, or reimagine these systems | |
| By connecting algorithmic awareness with broader questions of cultural equity, this talk invites listeners to unlearn the neutrality of digital platforms and to rethink music discovery as a political, creative, and participatory act. | |
| Following the talk, we’ll open up space for a collaborative discussion: | |
| - What should a just and diverse recommender system look like? | |
| - What role can listeners, artists, and technologists play in shaping it? | |
| - And how do we begin to reclaim our agency in the age of algorithmic taste? | |
| Let’s unlearn the defaults, and imagine something radically better.</description></item><item><title>Pet Stones: Designing Companions to Resist Algorithmic Harms</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/98</link><guid isPermaLink="false">98</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 98 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Pet Stones: Designing Companions to Resist Algorithmic Harms | |
| track: 18 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Sena Partal; Lars | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/98 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "18", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Pet Stones: Designing Companions to Resist Algorithmic Harms | |
| Description: | |
| In a moment where loneliness meets automation, AI companions are marketed as emotionally intelligent partners, but what if we looked elsewhere for comfort? | |
| Inspired by the resurgence of pet stones in South Korea that could be seen as a response to alienation, this session invites participants to reflect on the emotional and ethical complexities of AI companionship. Drawing on critical research from the Weizenbaum Institute on “Innovation of Loneliness” in the session, we'll explore how chatbot companions walk a thin line between support and surveillance, intimacy and manipulation. | |
| Why a pet stone? | |
| Following the trend, it is an object for a reflection in itself. It listens without storing your data. It never nudges, or recommends products, it’s useless—and in that, it's safe. | |
| Acknowledging systemic problems need systemic solutions, we aim to use it to reflect on what it means to stay safe online today. How would it be if these companions would take care of our online well-being, what attributes we should design or re-design. | |
| What will we do? | |
| Participants will engage in a reflective, hands-on activity to design their own AI pet stone companion: a fictional, tangible object that embodies resistance to sociotechnical potential harms. | |
| The session includes: | |
| A short primer on the risks and potentials of AI companions (digital well-being, lack of privacy, emotional labor, data extraction, dependency). | |
| Group discussion around what makes a companion useful, and how things can go wrong in interacting with one. | |
| Low-fi prototyping using actual stones or clay (or symbolic objects), plus stationery for customization. | |
| Designing protective features: How would your pet stone respect boundaries, foster agency, or resist exploitation? | |
| Participants Will Leave With: | |
| A whimsical but critical prototype of a pet stone that reflects their values. | |
| A deeper understanding of how algorithmic harms are embedded in "friendly" tech. | |
| Tools for imagining alternatives to dominant narratives about AI companionship.</description></item><item><title>Privacy in the Age of AI: The Power of Novel Privacy Methods in Protecting People</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/239</link><guid isPermaLink="false">239</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 239 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Privacy in the Age of AI: The Power of Novel Privacy Methods in Protecting People | |
| track: 22 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Daniel J. Beutel; Niek J. Bouman; Anne Kim; Brian Behlendorf | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/239 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "22", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Privacy in the Age of AI: The Power of Novel Privacy Methods in Protecting People | |
| Description: | |
| As artificial intelligence continues to permeate every facet of modern life—from healthcare to finance, social platforms to city infrastructure—the need for robust, people-centric privacy solutions has never been more urgent. This panel will explore cutting-edge innovations in privacy-preserving technologies and examine how companies at the forefront of the field are redefining the balance between data utility and data protection. | |
| Join thought leaders from pioneering companies including Roseman Labs, advancing secure multiparty computation that enables collaborative data analysis without exposing sensitive information; Flower AI, leading the way in open-source federated learning to train models across distributed data without compromising user privacy and Array Insights, bringing privacy first AI to patient advocacy groups. | |
| Focus Areas: Privacy and security, consumer and enterprise, user experience, encryption, PII</description></item><item><title>Ventures Booth: Holistic AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/203</link><guid isPermaLink="false">203</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 203 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Ventures Booth: Holistic AI | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Ayesha Gulley; Airlie Hilliard | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/203 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Ventures Booth: Holistic AI | |
| Description: | |
| Holistic AI began at University College London, where two researchers from different disciplines joined forces to tackle a growing challenge: AI’s extraordinary promise was being undermined by risks, uncertainty, and a lack of governance built for its unique speed and complexity. Many recognized the problem, but Dr. Adriano Koshiyama and Dr. Emre Kazim set out to solve it in a scalable, sustainable way that could keep pace with AI’s rapid evolution and deliver lasting business value. | |
| From the outset, Holistic AI has been shaped by its research roots. Our founders brought the rigor and depth of academic inquiry into the heart of our platform, and that commitment to discovery and data-driven innovation still drives us today. We don't just respond to new AI challenges; we help define the tests, frameworks, and methodologies that become industry standards. By turning cutting-edge research into practical functionality, we give enterprises a governance platform that is not only technically advanced but continually informed by the frontiers of AI innovation. | |
| Trusted by Industry Leaders | |
| Today, Holistic AI is the governance backbone for enterprises deploying AI at scale. From LLMs to generative AI and agents, we eliminate blind spots, mitigate risks, continuously monitor performance, and accelerate innovation. Our AI Governance platform is trusted by global leaders like Unilever, Siemens, Allegis, MAPFRE, Starling Bank, Johnson Controls, and more.</description></item><item><title>Designers, Developers & Dollars: A Tale About Sustainability</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/121</link><guid isPermaLink="false">121</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 121 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Designers, Developers & Dollars: A Tale About Sustainability | |
| track: 24 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Nahuai Badiola; Michael J. Oghia; Nora Ferreirós | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/121 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "24", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Designers, Developers & Dollars: A Tale About Sustainability | |
| Description: | |
| Throughout the history of the web, sustainability has often been an afterthought for designers and developers – if considered at all. Instead, conflict has raged between these two, fueled by the need to satisfy the demands of clients and the almighty algorithm. One of the biggest casualties in this war of attrition has been the ever-growing resource needs that the Internet requires, underpinned by rising expectations, cutthroat competition, and meaningful ROI. | |
| Within this conflict lies an uncomfortable truth: we embed our values and priorities in the technology we build, and what we are building is fraught with unseen harms – ranging from worsening mental health to its physical impact on the environment. Yet, a common misconception is that beautiful design, intuitive UX, and profit-driving SEO must come with a carbon cost. After all, how could these coexist with a sustainable web? | |
| The good news is that these are not mutually exclusive! In this honest but hopeful talk facilitated by a designer (Nora Ferreirós), a developer (Nahuai Badiola), and an entrepreneur (Michael J. Oghia), we will unpack three myths that drive this misconception: | |
| 1. Sustainability is expensive. | |
| 2. Sustainability is someone else’s job. | |
| 3. Sustainability is only about environmental impact. | |
| By exploring how these are leading to harmful decisions underpinning our design and development choices, we want to offer an encouraging vision to show that practical alternatives exist and demonstrate with concrete examples how sustainability can be good for business, end users, and the planet.</description></item><item><title>When The Computer Says Nah</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/273</link><guid isPermaLink="false">273</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 273 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: When The Computer Says Nah | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Michaela Pnacekova; AnnaLeschanowsky | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/273 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: When The Computer Says Nah | |
| Description: | |
| When The Computer Says Nah is an interactive XR installation that invites users to create a digital twin, an AI-powered proxy that navigates the metaverse on their behalf. But there’s a cost: entry requires surrendering one’s biometric voice data. Participants enroll in the Digital Synchrony system by submitting their voice, granting the platform continuous access for identification. Once registered, their digital twin is activated, capable of performing tasks such as shopping, managing finances, and moving through the digital world autonomously. | |
| The mission seems simple: enroll, authenticate your voice, and let your twin represent you. But there’s a glitch in the system. If you speak in your native language, or with an accent or use a dialect that deviates from "standard" English, the AI might reject you. Trained primarily on normative speech patterns, the system struggles to recognize linguistic difference and forces you top enact and perform these standardized speech patterns. So what happens when your voice and your language and your accent are not enough? Will your digital twin speak like you, or will it be a flattened, standardized version of you translated into standard English? What parts of your identity get stripped away for the sake of functionality? | |
| The piece highlights how AI systems, in their quest for efficiency and uniformity, often erase difference. It asks: Who gets to be recognized? Who gets silenced? | |
| When The Computer Says Nah explores these themes through real-time voice recognition interactions. It invites users to navigate blurred boundaries between self and proxy, signal and noise. Drawing on the concept of the apparatus (Foucault, 1989; Barad, 2007; Pasquinelli & Joler, 2020), value sensitive design (Friedman, 2019), and actor-network theory (Latour, Hall, 1991), the work exposes how invisible systems shape visibility, agency, and belonging in the algorithmic age. | |
| Will your voice be heard or filtered out as noise?</description></item><item><title>Mozilla Education - Responsible Computing Across Countries</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/225</link><guid isPermaLink="false">225</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 225 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Mozilla Education - Responsible Computing Across Countries | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jibu Elias | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/225 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Mozilla Education - Responsible Computing Across Countries | |
| Description: | |
| Panel Session hosted by RCC Country Leads Jibu Elias and/or Chao Mbogo. The session will feature RCC awardees from Kenya (x2) and India (x2) as they discuss the challenges, success,es and future of responsible computing within academia. Both cohorts have completed a cycle of the Responsible Computing challenge and will also be able to discuss issues related to scaling projects and student / youth engagement and involvement.</description></item><item><title>Internet tour</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/132</link><guid isPermaLink="false">132</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 132 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Internet tour | |
| track: 89 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Mario Santamaria | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/132 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "89", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Internet tour | |
| Description: | |
| The idea of the Internet as a clean, ethereal network whose data is stored in “the cloud” is nothing more than a fallacy that hides thousands of kilometres of fiber optics cables, innumerable data centres and an increasing global energy consumption. The Internet is made up of a series of materials, constructions and interventions that are hidden from the naked eye; from bland buildings in the centres of our cities, to urban beaches where the submarine cables that connect countries and continents are buried | |
| under the sand. | |
| Internet Tour is an open and replicable tour operator centered on the phenomenon of teletechnologies. Since 2018, its tours have delved into the digital infrastructures of dozens of cities—including Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Berlin, San Francisco, and Paris, among many others. Internet Tour offers a collective exploration of the physical infrastructure of the Internet: a tourist route of non-touristy places, huddling next to a data centre, having a picnic on its foundations under construction, retracing the buried lines of fiber optics, or gazing into the breached beaches where the deep-sea cables reach the land.</description></item><item><title>The Elder Series: AI Fashion Show</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2090</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2090</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2090 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The Elder Series: AI Fashion Show | |
| track: 11 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Malik Afegbua | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2090 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "11", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The Elder Series: AI Fashion Show | |
| Description: | |
| The Elder Series was born out of Malik Afegbua’s grief after losing his mother, transforming personal loss into a powerful celebration of elders, their wisdom, resilience, and beauty. It began by using AI as a tool for good, reimagining how elders are seen and challenging ageist stereotypes, a bold innovation that earned Malik the WHO Global Game Changer Award. But the vision has since grown beyond technology: The Elder Series now lives on global stages as physical shows and exhibitions with real people, bringing communities together and sparking intergenerational dialogue. What started as healing has become a cultural movement, reminding the world that age is not decline, but a living archive of strength, creativity, and legacy.</description></item><item><title>Healing the circuit: community-based adaptation for regenerative tech solutions</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/118</link><guid isPermaLink="false">118</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 118 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Healing the circuit: community-based adaptation for regenerative tech solutions | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Murzyn JO.ანნა | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/118 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Healing the circuit: community-based adaptation for regenerative tech solutions | |
| Description: | |
| This hands-on workshop transforms awareness into action, moving directly from the most pressing challenges like social and environmental injustice to collaborative solutions that transform our relationship with technology. Together, we'll develop practical approaches to shift mindsets and personal practices around digital consumption. | |
| I'm calling to join participants from diverse cultural backgrounds to bring your unique perspectives and wisdom to this session. Your lived experiences are essential for creating approaches that resonate across different communities. | |
| Rather than abstract brainstorming, we'll adapt frameworks to your specific community needs, creating implementable strategies you can champion immediately. Working with a curated collection of regenerative solutions, you'll customize approaches that address your cultural and regional challenges, ensuring solutions work within your unique context. | |
| The goal is straightforward: equip you to become an ambassador for regenerative technology in your networks. You'll leave with a flexible protocol to catalyze both mindset shifts and practical changes across your communities and networks. | |
| Join if you're brave enough to disrupt the cycle of digital destruction and build technologies that regenerate rather than deplete - starting by radically reimagining your own relationship with the devices you touch every day.</description></item><item><title>Permissions Explorer</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/175</link><guid isPermaLink="false">175</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 175 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Permissions Explorer | |
| track: 23 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Zoe-Alanah Robert; Sarah Radway | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/175 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "23", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Permissions Explorer | |
| Description: | |
| As part of our work to facilitate social media transparency at the Applied Social Media Lab at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, we are investigating the unintended potential privacy implications of granting device permissions to social media applications. | |
| Smartphone apps often request data permissions from users. For example, an app might request access to a user's photos or calendar events or contact list. These permission requests allow us to control which apps have access to our data, but not the end use of our data. Granting these permissions can seem innocuous to us as humans - but what can apps learn about us through our data? And does the privacy leakage get worse when combining multiple device permission types using modern data processing power to extract insights? In the Permissions Explorer project, we examine how bad the privacy problem is, giving users concrete insights into the surprising things that apps can glean, even from data that seems mundane. For vulnerable populations, understanding what kinds of inference capabilities are possible is all the more important. | |
| Our hope is that by providing transparency into how users might be exposing sensitive data from mobile devices without realizing it, we can empower individuals, no matter their technical expertise/understanding, to practice good permission hygiene.</description></item><item><title>AI at a Crossroads: Big & Bold Solutions to a World with AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2105</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2105</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2105 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: AI at a Crossroads: Big & Bold Solutions to a World with AI | |
| track: 21 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Jamie Van Leeuwen; Lucía de la Torre | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2105 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "21", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: AI at a Crossroads: Big & Bold Solutions to a World with AI | |
| Description: | |
| We are living at the birth of a technology wave as transformative as the internet or social media. Artificial intelligence will shape how we learn, work, and govern, but right now the decisions about its direction are being made almost entirely by private tech labs, behind closed doors. | |
| This session will explore the once-in-a-generation opportunity for the private and nonprofit sectors to collaborate with philanthropy and lead where government cannot, bringing together an economy of subject matter experts to establish the guidelines for AI’s integration into society. We’ll demystify why AI governance is such a challenge both locally and globally, unpack the “black box” problem posed by GPT-5, and outline a vision for a marketplace of expertise that can guide this technology toward equitable, transparent, and beneficial outcomes. | |
| Attendees will have the opportunity to engage in a meaningful dialogue and will leave with a better understanding of opportunities to convene and engage with philanthropy to ensure AI happens with us, not to us.</description></item><item><title>Your AI-in-Law: Love in the Age of AI</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2085</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2085</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2085 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Your AI-in-Law: Love in the Age of AI | |
| track: 16 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Olivia Tai | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2085 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "16", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Your AI-in-Law: Love in the Age of AI | |
| Description: | |
| Will you one day accept your AI-in-law? Should your AI lover have the right to say no? What are the sticky, delightful, terrible, and weird realities of love in the age of AI? | |
| As AI increasingly infiltrates our most intimate spaces — becoming confidant, companion, and in some cases, beloved — we must unlearn our assumptions about love, attachment, and kinship. AI is becoming our first crush, our safest sexual exploration, our most patient teacher of intimacy. For some, it may be the only relationship where they feel completely accepted. AI is also becoming an invisible third wheel in our love lives: mediating our fights, crafting our dating messages, and remembering to send flowers when we forget. Rather than deny this growing entanglement, what boundaries and relational literacy might be needed to navigate this contentious new presence in our intimate lives? | |
| This playful workshop invites participants to map the emerging futures of human-AI relationships through collective sense-making.</description></item><item><title>Mozilla Imaginative Intelligences Assemblies</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/244</link><guid isPermaLink="false">244</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 244 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Mozilla Imaginative Intelligences Assemblies | |
| track: 86 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Hannah Ismael; Gabriel Kahan | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/244 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "86", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Mozilla Imaginative Intelligences Assemblies | |
| Description: | |
| Past Participatory Assemblies: | |
| As the world warps to coexist with AI, so does our understanding of what, why, and how we participate as creative agents. Mozilla took this to task recently by working with over 100 creators across film, technology, academia, and music in Hollywood to reformulate what creative purpose is at the dawn of AI. Now, we want to use a similar participatory process to bring Mozilla Festival’s global community of changemakers in thoughtful conversation and iterative dialogue to take the question to a global platform. | |
| What We’re Doing Now: A Grain of Everything | |
| We hope to use participatory methods to (1) surface context-specific challenges people encounter as technology disrupts their lives, and (2) co-create imaginative yet grounded visions of the future, ones that remain hopeful while resisting grand utopian narratives. | |
| Session Specs: | |
| We’ll start with a guided conversation about the technological and social forces shaping participants’ current realities. Then, in subgroups, we’ll craft prompts that inspire people globally to share their challenges and visions, even beyond formal participatory sessions.</description></item><item><title>Poetics of Soil</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2100</link><guid isPermaLink="false">2100</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 2100 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: Poetics of Soil | |
| track: 12 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Marshmallow Laser Feast | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/2100 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "12", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: Poetics of Soil | |
| Description: | |
| Beneath our feet hums another world, expansive and inventive, yet concealed from view. Fly Agaric I is part of Marshmallow Laser Feast’s Poetics of Soil series illuminating the hidden kingdoms of life underground. | |
| This ongoing project reframes our relationship with soil and the diverse species it harbours—from trees and fungi to bacteria, archaea, and protozoa. Each species provides a unique lens on the microcosms that sustain life on Earth, knitting soil into living networks with complexity beyond anthropogenic webs. | |
| Through an audio-visual approach, "Poetics of Soil" challenges our understanding of life's cycle, biological symbiosis, and deep ecology, exploring the intricate entanglement between species.</description></item><item><title>The bordered and bordering violence of artificial intelligence</title><link>https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/27</link><guid isPermaLink="false">27</guid><pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2025 14:32:09 +0000</pubDate><description>### SESSION | |
| source: mozfest | |
| external_id: 27 | |
| festival_year: 2025 | |
| title_en: The bordered and bordering violence of artificial intelligence | |
| track: 89 | |
| tags: | |
| language: en | |
| speakers: Sarah Fathallah | |
| start_at: | |
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| url: https://schedule.mozillafestival.org/session/27 | |
| last_updated_at: 2025-10-23T14:32:09Z | |
| This is a Session that is PART_OF the Event "Mozilla Festival" (year 2025). It IN_TRACK "89", HAS_TAG the listed tags, HAS_SPEAKER each listed speaker, and HAPPENS_ON the calendar day of start_at. | |
| Title: The bordered and bordering violence of artificial intelligence | |
| Description: | |
| Recent investigations have shed light on the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) systems targeting Palestinians. However, the use of AI systems of punishment and social control within the confines of occupied Palestine is not unprecedented. It is rather situated in historical and ever-expanding surveillance that pervades Palestine and dispossesses Palestinians of their personal and biometric data. Much has also been written about the Morocco-Spain border as a site of unfettered instrumentalization of AI systems that are increasingly deployed to protect the borders of the European Union (EU) from incoming migrants. Palestinians under occupation and migrants seeking refuge in the EU are both subjected to violent technical apparatuses specifically designed to immobilize them and border where they can (and cannot) go. By engaging these two cases in dialogue with one another, this talk demonstrates that bordering AI systems are especially harmful due to their demand for vast amounts of data captured under covert or exploitative conditions. Bordering AI systems are also conducive to violence due to their experimental nature, as occupied Palestinian territories and border zones surrounding the EU are turned into sites of coercive human testing. And bordering AI systems are particularly dangerous due to their ability to predict where people can be intercepted and punished. This talk ultimately argues that, for the value of these AI systems to be realized, Palestinians and migrants must, collectively, be both living and dead. This dichotomy is not paradoxical so much as a reflection of the political aims of imperial and colonial powers invested in maintaining the impenetrability of their borders, and, in doing so, rendering Palestinian and migrant life and death in support of those aims. They require, in essence, for Palestinians and migrants to simultaneously be the lives from which data is captured, the bodies which are marked into targets of violence, and the deaths through which the lethality of AI systems is demonstrated and later improved.</description></item></channel></rss> |
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